Wireless Network

What would be the cheapest way for me to wireless internet set up on my computer?

Well, first of all, compared to a wired setup, wireless is far from cheap. Prices have, however, dropped since I set up my wireless network at home. 802.11G routers are about $90 nowadays, and PCI 802.11G cards are in the $60 range now. My setup for a router and card was more in the $200 range.

Frankly, I’d much rather just hop in the crawlspace of your house and drop a wire. Cat5E cable is dirt cheap, connectors are cheap, a keystone will only set you back a few dollars, and your set. Total cost for all the stuff needed to do a wired setup: about $20. That’s a big savings compared to wireless. It’s just all a matter of wheter or not you have the dedication to hop in your crawlspace, and put a hole in your wall.

$35 for a cheap hub & 2 network cables. $65 for boradband router & 2 network cables. Cheap.
Cheap wireless router $99-$199, 1 network cable & 1 wireless card another $100 or so. Plus add 10-20ms to your ping times and privacy issues.
Wireless is good if you’re renting a house, and don’t want to run wiring. Not good if guy next door has one too…

sorry that was boredband, i mean broadband…

First of all you can buy a router / hub / wireless base-station for about 60.oo or so… and a pcmcia nic card is like 40- 45$ and all routers usually come with a cable or too…

Jason where do you get stuff that cheap? Dlink’s Focus Day pcm’s were $55 wholesale…

The wireless network is all set up. I was borrowing another computers broadband networking wireless USB adapter. And that worked dandy on my computer. But I can’t use that one anymore.
Would it be cheaper to get one of those or to buy a card and install it.?

Ebay… is a good place too… what about these…

ncix.com/products/index.php? … acture=SMC

out of stock w my supplier but the new CA model 802.11G is only $65.

these ones are really superb: ASUS WL100G about $65 wholesale

the little flip up antenna really boosts the range. you can override XP and set your own stuff with differing configs, home, office, public etc. Set up the fire chief with one and he can just ‘connect to’ our mountain transmitter just about anywhere in town. At work, he can ‘connect to’ his office DHCP WEP enabled, or he can walk into the cafe and just jump on with fully open.

I haven’t tried any of these on board wireless cards but i have been hearing some good review’s…

I’ve been installing DLink 520+ (802.11b models cuz they’re being dumped cheap) instead of tranzeo PCI cards and cutting home wireless install costs by $50-$55. The SMA connector instead of N on the antenna cable saves another $24. I also have to engineer an over the mountain shot to service 50 home at the old minesite, and possibly a remote reserve as well. :angry:

Mucked with a lot of HP systems that have that Broadcom onboard wireless. Two notes: it don’t work with W2K. Takes the XP driver, indicates all is well but just won’t work. With the XP it’s supposed to use it is ok. Just ok, with mega balloon windows.

Push the button to turn wireless on. wait…
No wireless network available
Several available
None available
Duhhhhh there it is
Open balloon, yes connect, yes even if its not secure
No wireless network available
Several available
None available
Duhhhhh there it is wait…
unavailable offline. click connect. If dialer pops up start again…

Tree planter walks in with Mac laptop: can I use hotspot? Yep for $2.99
Thanks! sits in chair surfs… pays, leaves.

Look! My HP is surfing wirelsss, hyuk hyuk… how much???

i do the same at home or when i go to the mall or to my Gf’s house… It’s so nice to just walk up and use it… But of course a one time setup with mac address and Wep…

I just set three buildings in a row w open systems. You can walk for about a mile and surf free. I’ll put WEP keys in if the customer asks or I see too much traffic… :laughing:
don’t have to worry cuz they’re those crappy Dinks you can’t see the WAN side of. That’s hilarious, using the fault we talked about as a security feature! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

i’m Glad it is working for you …

Umm… that’s pretty standard. Chances are that any lack of communication between computers is just a routing issue and somebody clever enough could easily browse through your entire network. There is no security between the wireless connection and the non-wan ports. The connection between the wireless and the WAN port is going to be NAT based that’s pretty much implement in that situation for internet communication.

I’m no hacker, but based on what you’re describing, I think I could probably do what ever I wanted in your network. In the very least I could easily access any computers connected to that particular access point.

No matter what your opinion may be about D-Link product, network-wise, they’re going to function exactly the same as every other product around the same price range. You should probably post a little more about exactly how you ended up configuring your setup.

That’s what one would figure. But if you put a domain or workgroup together and try to extend it through a Dlink, if you come in thru the WAN port, the LAN port computers can see each other but not the other side.
Jason’s solution was to use the router as a hub and don’t use the WAN port at all. That works.
I used his setup in two instances and a Syslink wireless in another where the entire network was available and I didn’t have to set anything in the router to make it so.
If you can think of another solution, I’d welcome it because I like stuff that works and is disgustingly cheap. Like the shelf of Dlink stuff I still have.

$5.80 for NIC cards, $5.80 that’s obscene. That’s less than a pound of lean hamburger goes for, close to half a pack of smokes!

$5.80? What are you buying for $5.80?

Ok, well first of all, with a default setup, the D-Link Gateway/Router/Wireless will not allow traffic inbound. There’s a possibility that you could \192.168.0.X to a computer connected to the WAN port from the built in hub, but NOT the other way around. A computer connected to the WAN port would see all traffic coming from computers connected to the built in hub coming from a single IP address.

Computers connected to each other through the built in hub or wireless will “seeâ€

im he is not using the nat fw or dhcp on the routers he is just using them as a wireless hub… no nat or anything… this is done buy going to the dlink config page and turning off dhcp… then putting the cable from his network hub into this dlink product into the port 123 or 4… all routers work this way… I do it all the time when i take my router to my friends… instead of setting things up and messing with crap… It all comes down to experiance : )

What I was trying to do was use it as sort of a bridge between two buildings. The computers in one bldg needed to join the ones in another bldg. Sawmills are always tearing down overhead lines, or digging up buried ones.
It was a replacement for two Orinoco Wavelan IIs set in AP-AP mode that merely replaced the cabling, but added true wireless access. Now they can walk around with a little HP pda and pick readings from equipment and send them to the server. At the other end in a boardroom, they can pull a powerpoint off the server to the projector and a visiting salesman or forester can surf the net w a wireless laptop. The visitor can see there’s a huge internal network, but can’t access it w/o an account on the server.
It’s quite something, but would not work with Dlink NAT’g the wireless side. Other routers allow the NAT side to pass through Netbeui/NetBIOS traffic as well.

On the other town situation, if you manage to, the only interesting stuff is the porn in the motel manager’s explorer cache :laughing:
My cafe wireless doesn’t allow IPs in the public range access to my network but allow mine to with a static IP config. in a private IP range.

BTW the NICs were DLink 530TXs I got on a focus day sale. I have a pile of SMC1244s that were a few pennies more on their focus sale. They’re free w installation on our ADSL lines, but I hose the assholes that pick Telus ADSL (it’s a dollar cheaper, man) $29.99 plus installation. 95% of them can’t even install a NIC themselves with the instruction book…

maxit.net/junk/were_hiring.pdf