What to use? (Wireless)

damnyanks

Howdy,

I need to share a net connection between a desktop and laptop. Wireles would seem to be the most conveinient method but I'm not too sure what to use.

The laptop is a Compaq Presario that comes with wireless (The 11mb one) in built. The desktop however has no wireless on it. So if I were to use wireless does anyone know if I need specific hardware. Its primarily just to share the net connection.

Has anyone any reccomendations on what to get?

Nietzschean

you could pick up an 802.11b pci card for your pc and try setup an ad-hoc connection between it and your laptop. This can bit a bit flaky and i'd suggest the same manufacturer as that of the wireless card in your laptop.
you could setup the connection using an access point in a few different ways :
1. Laptop -Wireless--> AP -Ethernet--> PC
if you have a spare ethernet port on your pc this could be quite handy and much more convenient to setup than an ad-hoc connection. (Might require a crossover cable to connect pc to AP(easy to get)). Can share the net connection off the pc, or get the AP to connect.

2. AP -Wireless--> PC,Laptop
you could setup the AP as a seperate thing and connect both the PC and laptop via wireless to it and each other. this would require an AP and a 802.11b card for your pc. Main advantage here would be if i you configure your Access Point to connect the the web for you (you can get them with inbuilt modems/dsl modems/cable modems). Thus allowing you to move your PC/Laptop to any point in the house with ease.



If you are just planning on using the laptop near the pc you could just go for an ethernet connection, which would be cheap, you probally have a network card in the pc(either way ethernet cards r well cheap now, i've like 5 spare ) which via a crossover cable you could just plug into the laptop.

Hobbes

I'm using a Linksys 802.11g card in my laptop and one of my desktops. To that I have a linksys adsl/router which has wireless connection. The rest of the machines in the house are using ethernet connection to that box.

If you plan on getting broadband its the way to go. I did have initial problems setting up. Basically the next door nieghbour had the exact same setup and my machines kept connecting to him. So I went next door and fixed up his network so it was hidden and only his machines could connect (also enabled encryption on both).

The G is much faster then B btw. You can do card to card (pc to pc) as I recall from the limited instructions with it but its not something I have set up.

Nietzschean

Hobbes wrote:

You can do card to card (pc to pc) as I recall

that'd be an ad-hoc one, the card to AP is considered infastructure

I did have initial problems setting up. Basically the next door nieghbour had the exact same setup and my machines kept connecting to him. So I went next door and fixed up his network so it was hidden and only his machines could connect (also enabled encryption on both).

You could have set a manditory mac address for the access point for your stuff(if same ssid) or configured it not to connect to any network you don't have a profile for(different ssid's, which i imagine would have been the case).

Hobbes

SkyLynx wrote:

You could have set a manditory mac address for the access point for your stuff(if same ssid) or configured it not to connect to any network you don't have a profile for(different ssid's, which i imagine would have been the case).

Yea you would think that, but for some reason windows kept wanting to connect to his despite telling it not to. If left mine visible it would work. Both networks had different ssids and different channels.

Also the linksys software tended to overwrite the windows settings. It was a bit confusing because you get sod all instructions with it. Once it was set up though I haven't had a problem since.