i'm going wireless...

[ohGrFreak]

After a few calls to techs at my ISP and a basic troubleshooting scenario, I have figued out that our family needs a new router, and with three computers, we could use less wires running around the house. That's why I bought this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1022854&CatId=370

We are super tight on cash, we just barely made our account positive, but we NEED to use our computers, that's why I settled for a refurbished router/pci card combo. We'll still use ethernet for the other comps until we can afford PCI adapters for them.

Now, you see I am getting a "B" speed setup, this supposedly runs no faster than 11MBPS for data transfer, and that is fine for our purposes, just internet sharing and printer sharing. Our internet is a measly 1Mbps.

What about D-Link though, they are a good brand right? My family insists on using Linksys, but we don't have that kind of money here.

One more thing before I go browse around tech-forums some more, what are the basic things I need to do to setup a wireless network? Is it the same as a wired network? If so, my finacee has that down to a tee. Or rather, how would setting up a wired network differ from a wireless network, beside the obvious fact that one used ethernet and the other doesn't?

Thank you all,
Matthew

 

[office politics]

with wireless there's a few setting that you have to match up between the router and the adapters. the SSID (wireless network name), the channel (6 default for my netgear router), and any encryption protection you add (WAP/WEP)

windows xp will detect wireless cards and run its zero configuration service. When you open it up, you should click search for wireless networks and then click connect to the network you find.

 

[hilowe]

D-Link is a good brand. Netgear is another decent brand.

The basic things that you will need to setup the network are the access point, which is built into the router, and some wireless access cards, which it looks like one was included in the setup that you were looking at.

A 4 port wireless router will also have 4 RJ45 jacks for the wired side, so you can connect the computers that are close with Cat 5e.

Edit: csamuels beat me to the reply. That's what I get for doing some work in between writing and posting.

 

[office politics]

lol, why work when you can browse TF. HAHA

 

[ohGrFreak]

This sounds quite easy to setup, thanks!

 

[office politics]

heh, yea until you try to search for your network and it won't come up. then you try hard coding the setting and you still cant connect. This was the case for me recently. my dad bought a new laptop with a integrated nic. I couldn't get the damn thing to connect. However, i took the usb wireless nic that we were using from the old laptop and installed it without any problems.