Here is the simple experience of going wireless and being happy with it for the last 6 month.
Yes I do use AOL. Being slightly more expensive up front they just doubled the bandwidth for the same money AND you get a free firewall and great spam protection.
They provide free support.
One thing that needs to be looked at, AOL run a slightly different network.
There is a Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) which in nearly all Lana\’s and other wireless networks is 1500 AOL\’s MTU is 1400!
This is important because not all wireless AP\’s (access points) and / or router combinations have the necessary firmware (their little operating system) that allows this to be changed.
Also it is money well spend to get a router and / or access point that is already updated to the latest firmware.
I just recently had a friend of mine buying exactly what I use: DLink router/AP and Buffalo cards. The DLink router had an age old firmware on it thus couldn\’t connect to AOL.
Upgrading the firmware to the latest took 5 minutes (but one needs to know what to do) and there it was, MTU could be set to 1400 one mail account was declared the connection account. Restarted and immediately on-line.
We now meet in the local bus shelter in driving rain just for fun because both of our networks are available there ….
Also Buffalo cards have the advantage that you can connect a small external antenna to gain signal.
This is great when you\’re on holiday driving a car and simply park in front of a hotel / airport or private house and use the Internet comfortable. Sometimes one has to pay for the privilege sometimes is simply free.
I strongly advise to buy at least two different makes of cards I use Buffalo and Dlink. The Dlink card looses signal every now and than although I have flash upgraded it. The Buffalo 54 card is stable and runs a stronger signal than any other I\’ve tested / used.
Testing throughput regularly the AOL DSL 512 runs at 480k down and 240k up all the time. There are no drop outs and I usually restart the router and AP once a week.
Best of luck
Expat