Wireless Networking....

[acropolite]

Let me say from the beginning that I hate wireless.:tasdevil: I have in the past tried wireless products from Netgear and found they were buggy, unreliable and had very poor range.
That said, I wanted the faciliy to be able to roam about the house and outside with my Laptop, so wireless is the necessary evil.
DSE/Tandy currently have an offer of a D-Link wireless (54G ) router and either a PCI or cardbus (Laptop) card for $149. After getting the devices home I started installation. The D link router is designed to connect to an existing DSL modem/router, in my case an Acatel Speedtouch530. The standard install wizard achieved no success, but after half an hour or so I am happy to say that I now have a fully functional wireless (encrypted of course) addition to my wired LAN. The D-link router is happy to get an IP address from the 530 and itself acts as a DHCP server for the rest of my Lan. I used the D-link's inbuilt 4 port switch to connect my hard wired lan points. I can browse the net using the wireless connection and can use all shared resources on my network. I would highly recommend the D-link combo as advertised and given the problems that others seem to have had getting wireless to work I thought some positive feedback would be welcome. :D

PS. I have managed to control my LX90 across the network. Does anyone know of any software (other than remote desktop etc) to remotely drive the LPI or maybe a toUcam.

[elusiver]

i've setup quite a few wireless lan's which several brands of products, and had really never ran into any major problems. But what I use at home is linksys stuff, mainly because the firmwares are open source so there's alot of good 3rd party firmwares out there which let you do heaps more functions, like run xlinkkai for the xbox, increase u'r wireless signal, allow for Quality of Service to prioritise bandwidth(which is the feature i love the most for VOIP). The thing is to be realistic about your distance requirements. General rule of thumb is that a well positioned router will do and average size plaster cavity single story house no problems. Brick, concrete and steel are all killers of wireless signals. If you have some serious requirements though, netgears rangemax serious has 7 internal antenna's.. and are freakin awesome.

Also a quick note to anyone who's thinking about setting up wireless, make sure u lock u'r network down, by both WEP and MAC address.

el :)

el :)

[toetoe]

I am still playing around with wireless on the laptop and about 90% running. I don't understand what is in your quote, i don't recall seeing any of these settings while playing around with wireless..

[elusiver]

you should see the options under wireless security in your web based setup of your router. WEP is an encrypted code which is stamped on the packets of data sent via the wireless. Usually u'll have the option to generate the WEP key via passphrase. Say you enter in 1234 as your passphrase it'll generate a 64-Bit WEP key 759478362C . Then you put in under the settings on your laptop that the wireless network your using uses WEP encryption, and type in the passkey. It'll hold this setting so you only have to do it once.

with the MAC address, you'll have a setting again under wireless security to allow only certain MAC address's to access u'r wireless network. You just enter in the MAC address of your PCMCIA/PCI wireless network card(it should be printed on the card)... and that means that only that card can access u'r wireless.

hope this is clear.. any questions just ask.

el :)

[toetoe]

Thats clear el, thanks, i have not played around with the router, maybe i should get to know it a bit better..