Setting up a wireless home Network

DaithiSurfer

I hope this is the right area to put this in.
Feel free to move it if its not.

I want to set my PC and laptop at home up so that they can share
printer, internet connection etc.
I already have a USB DSL Modem.
I am assuming there are other people here in the same boat, so maybe we could amalgamate any info in this thread.

Basically i want to know what are my options.
Can anyone help.
Please post the kit required to do this, prices and where i can buy.
I am looking for the cheapest way to do this wirelessly.
Thanks
Daithi

milltown

One of the best things I have ever done, go for it!
Unfortunately I do not live in an enabled exchange so I can't get DSL but I am sharing my dial up connection wirelessly with my laptop.
I got PCI and PCMIA wireless cards on e-bay for $100 dollars all-in delivered. 802.11b is the current standard. 802.11g is faster and backward compatible with .11b but more expensive and for most people unneccessary as your net connection won't come near the 11Mbps that the cards are capable of. I bought Nortel Networks cards that work fine for what I want but are not well known and, as such, there is not a lot of info or support available for them. Nortel themselves are only geared up to support corporate customers and I suspect are not even selling these cards any more. Spend an evening doing a bit of research on what is being widely used before you buy anything. Prices have probably come down even more since I bought mine so try for Lucent, Buffalo or Orinoco.
Be aware that for your desktop you will need either a PCI card or a PCMCIA card and PCI adaptor.
Sharing the internet connection should be a cinch with Windows 98 or better, XP is particularly easy. You will then need to set your drives and folders to be shared and map the drives from PC a to PC b and vice versa.
That's all I can think of now, any more questions PM me and I'll do my best to help.

NITEMAN

Hello, can anyone help.
I have just intalled a Wireless Netgear MA101 adapter to
my pc and a Belkin wirless Card in to my laptop.
Both running XP home.
After 2 days trying to set them up they can now see each other.

However i did a test for speed.

I transferred a 1183K file from my laptop to my PC over the wireless network.
Guess how long this took.
1 Min 50 secs.
Seem a bit long to me.
Anyone any suggestions ast to how to speed it up.
Hoe long should it take at 11Mbps.
Thanks in Advance guys.

sirlinux

Try getting updated drivers for the ma101, i had awful trouble with the original drivers that came with this model, also i found that fixing the data rate (e.g. to 11Mbps) sorted teh unit out from randomly dropping the speed as long as your connection is good enough to stay working at 11Mbps.

NITEMAN

Thanks for the advice sirlinux.
I've done all of that and still the same problem.

The internet connection is fine but file transfer is terribly slow.
I've been trwling the net all the to find a solution and there seems to be a lot of people with the same problem but no solutions.

sirlinux

Try using the repair function on xp on the adaptors on either side, also look at http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q289256

NITEMAN

Hi sirlinux,
I found the answer.
I actually had repair, but the problem was that the files transferred at only about 5K a second.
Then it twigged with me 'thats internet speed'
So i delete the Network bridge that XP set up when i set up the network.
And all of a sudden i get full speed. Transferred a 30Meg file less than a minute.
That only took about 24 hours to figure out.
I'll crack this networking lark yet.
Thanks for all of your suggestions.
I'll be back to you when i get an ADSL router no doubt