Wireless Network Products
Greetings, and happy new year to all! At home, I have an ethernet network in our office with ADSL. My daughter needs a new PC laptop for school, which has wireless (802.11) built in (unfortunately Macs are not an option). Since we also have an iBook and another PC laptop with wireless installed, I thought that it's about time to get wireless access from our network. My potential problem is that we have a largish, two storey house, and it would be nice to have access from anywhere in the house (and preferably out near the pool, too!). I've heard of problems with Airports in this regard. Can anyone provide some personal experience with this issue? I am keen to hear of particular products which people have found useful. Cheers, Andrew
Re: Wireless Network Products
On 2/1/05 9:00 PM, Andrew Schox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My potential problem is that we have a largish, two storey house, and it would be nice to have access from anywhere in the house (and preferably out near the pool, too!). I've heard of problems with Airports in this regard. Can anyone provide some personal experience with this issue? I am keen to hear of particular products which people have found useful. My son uses an old iBook at 11MB/s wirelessly at school. Even though the school is Windows only I installed ADMITMac and he can log in mount and use the schools Windows 2000 Server network printers. The school has a pile of Belkin Wireless Access Points but their range is 50 metres at best and the signal drops away quickly. At home we have a 3 level house with a pool out back, we used a 111MB/sec Netgear Access Point connected to a wired router at first and my son had no problems accessing our network wirelessly. We have a primary school behind our house and he could access our network from their playing fields. This is at least a 100 metres. We have since added a Netgear 54MB/s Wireless Router to replace our old fixed router and attached a Airport Express to the Stereo and he wanders anywhere in the house always at full signal strength. He tells me it all seems so much better at home compared to school. As far as I know while the a standard is 11MB/s compared to the g standard at 54MB/s, the a standard has a better range. I guess it comes down to what type of card the PC Laptop uses and what you'll put into your other laptops but the faster speed option is the way I'd go. If you find you don't get enough range you can always add another Access Point which are much cheaper than full wireless routers. All the best Greg Sharp
