New to Wireless Networking

[blinky]

Hey everybody. I currently have a setup with 2 computers sharing one cable internet connection through a router. However, my mom is purchasing a new laptop for herself for christmas and she is constantly bothered by the fact that there is a long ethernet cord running across my house between the two computers and has decided that we must switch to wireless networking. The thing is, I know next to nothing about wireless networking or how to go about and set it up. If anyone could please advise me as to a good router to purchase and wireless ethernet cards, I would be greatly appreciative. The router needs only to support at most 4 computers and, as for the cards, I'd prefer to have up to 100mbps transfer rate if that is possible with wireless. Also, is there anything else involving wireless networking that I should know before trying to set this all up myself? I'm pretty familiar with Linksys since it's my current wired router so another Linksys would probably be best. Thanks.

[johnnyis42]

since you already have a router with ethernet, if you have any free ports open for the LAN connectiony ou may consider purchasing an ethernet wireless bridge device or a standard wireless access point. for the most part they are the same device, with the acception of the bridge having some additional features that eliminate some network traffic from the ethernet network crossing over to the wireless network and creating unneccessary overhead on the wireless network. both of these should be cheaper than buying another router with wireless.

the best you will be able to see as far as bandwidth ont he wireless network is 54 megabit, although belkin has released 802.11n products that boast much higher badwidth, however the 802.11n standard hasn't been officially released by the IEEE, so it's pretty much BETA hardware and isn't guarenteed to work with the hardware that comes out later that is actually official 802.11n.

all you'd have to do with one of these devices is plug it right in to your free ethernet port and read the manual for how to access it. sometimes it is with the usual web based configuration, and sometimes you have to install a little utility to access it. either way there should be easy directions to follow in the manual for whatever one you buy.

for wireless networking, the most important thing to consider that is different from wired ethernet is security. for a msall home network you're not going to face big attacks from people who have tons of time ont heir hands to break in to your network unless you have a really determined odd ball running aorund your neighborhood, or if you really piss someone off. simple security measures like changing your default administrative password are the most important, then possibly setting connection restrictions to your network. WEP encryption works well, as does WPA, but the simplest thing is to set up MAC address filtering, so that only certain wireless network cards that you specify may connect to the network.

that's about the jist of it, feel free to post any more questions.

[slickvic22]

Linksys makes a wireless router w/ hard wire line connections also. I think you must have atleast one computer connected hard wired anyway. As for ethernet cards, ive always used Linksys w/ a linksys router, and their self setup cds are just easy. It will work and if it doesn't they have a 100 number. Very very simple.