Surfing wirelessly at home

davemc

Can someone tell me exactly what's required for surfing wirelessly on one's laptop at home assuming one's laptop has 802.11b built -in and is using the dreaded Eircom Hi-speed???not broadband/ADSL.........access point???etc....regards..

BoB_BoT

em.... you need to have a wireless hub, the hub need to be conneccted to the modem and as far as i know there's no way of connecting the hub directly to the modem with out the use of another computer that's connected to the modem. others might have better info than that, have never set up a wireless network before, think komplett have a deal this week on wireless hubs.

MrPinK

Stick a wireless network card in the PC that connects to the internet. The laptop can then connect to that PC and share whatever sort of connection that it's using.

BoB_BoT

interesting, didn't know you could do that by just sticking a wireless network card into it , sweet

MrPinK

Yeah, wireless cards can be used in ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) mode. It works well for small wireless networks but when you have a good few hosts then your performance is hit and you'll need to use an access point and have all your traffic going to one place.

You can get wireless PCI cards form komplett for about €50 or from Peats for €75. It be fair to Peats, their card is of higher spec.

The_Bullman

so are you lads saying that you don't even need a hub to share files or whatever between the laptop and the pc once they are both wireless enabled?

MrPinK

Yes. Wireless devices can connect directly to each other to form a peer-to-peer network.