iol bb with wireless network

tammy

Hey all,
Just wanted some advice. I have iol bb on my desktop. My girlfriend just got a new laptop today and I'm hoping to set up a wireless connection to it. She has the wireless card and I have a adsl modem from esat( zytel prestige using ethernet). So it would seem all I need is the wireless access point. As I assumed I could plug the access point into the adsl modem and keep my ethernet connection as it is. However the zytel prestige has only one ethernet port. So here's my questions:

Is it possible for me to get an access point, plug my modem into it and then have a ethernet connection from the access point to my pc?

Is it better practice to splash out on a combo adsl modem/router/access point, and if so could anyone recommend an ok budget one?

Could I get a ethernet splitter that would allow me to plug my desktop and the access point into the adsl modem?

Thanks for any help,

Steve S

What you need is a wireless router of the sort made by SMC (my brand of choice), Linksys, Netgear, etc. You don't need a combo modem/router/access point (you already have a modem/access point so why pay for it again)?

You should probably get one with a firewall built in. You should also look for one with WPA encryption rather than the weaker WEP. And you should use the encryption! You wouldn't believe how easy it is to walk (metaphorically) into people's hard drives and use their connections because they didn't bother encrypting their wireless network.

You plug the ethernet from the modem into the WAN port of the router, you plug the ethernet from your desktop into one of the LAN ports, you do some setup (including putting the modem into "bridge" mode: do a search on these forums for "encapsulation" and you'll find instructions) and bob's your father's brother.

You'll need to decide what flavour of wireless router to get: 802.11b and 802.11g are the usual ones. 802.11g is faster and backward-compatible with 802.11b so you should probably pay a tiny bit extra and get that even if your girlfriend's card is only 802.11b. This will have no effect on the speed of internet activity but will make for faster transfers between your computers.

tammy

cool thanks, I went ahead and got me a wireless router and am on the couch using the new lappy.