Wireless Web Connection?

[Steel Shootin']

A friend is asking for advice on what to buy to be able to carry his laptop around his house with a wireless connect to the www. He will be using an ethernet connection to road runner. I would imagine it's simply a product that has a transmitter at or near the modem, and a receiver that would attach to the card in the laptop.

Any suggestions on what product or brand to get? Thanks.

[johnhermes]

I don't know anything about product or brand, but I can find out. Jerry in our office has one at home that he raves about. He sits on his dock with his laptop and surfs the net.

[richhermes]

Actually Scott. I have the same hookup in my apartment. I sold my wired Linksys router and bought a wireless router.

I would go with Linksys. Both in the wireless NIC and router. Stick with the 802.11b standard witch is a 11mbps connection. There is no need to go with the new faster standard (802.11g) since Roadrunner will never go faster than 10mbps.

If you go with any other brand, just for reliability sake, make sure the router or access point and the NIC are the same brand.

What is really cool is that I can bring my laptop to work and pick up a wireless connection from IBM across the street.


ROUTER SPECS
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=35&prid=415

NIC SPECS
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=36&prid=427

[Steel Shootin']

Thanks for the info! I'll pass it along.

[Charlestondivin]

I deal with Wifi every day and have tried a lot of 802.xx products.
I like d-link 22mb transfer, good web interface for configuration, and only 50 bucks. Make sure you enable wep or at least limit the number of leases out of the router to the number of machines you have accessing it.

Router $50
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sku=D700-2158%20P

Pci Card $50
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?sku=d700-2058

Heck im sittin on the throne right now typing this wireless baby!

[richhermes]

Originally posted by Charlestondivin
Heck im sittin on the throne right now typing this wireless baby!


I hope everything comes out OK.:D

[Charlestondivin]

Wireless rocks! Its great to be able to sit on the couch watching tv and surfing. Pretty good range too.

I just got 8 of the new industrial d-link air premier DWL1000+ access points for work. Twice the power.

Yeah i know. Im a geek! Don't make me break out pictures of my gaming rig!

[richhermes]

OK, gaming rig??

Don't tell me you're one of these Everquest freaks.

[Charlestondivin]

Never played Everquest. I stick to the mind numbing first person shooters. Probably start playing Planetside when it comes out.
My job lets me stay on top of the latest pc hardware so I'm always upgrading, overclocking, Modding, etc.

[Steel Shootin']

Thanks. You guys got me so jacked up on this, I'm going to get one for myself. :)

[richhermes]

Scott,
I saw a guy in Westshore mall today that had a wireless NIC. He got on a network somewhere and was surfing and drinking his StarBucks.

I downloaded Max Payne, and that was a cool game. I like those cop and military shooter games, but those sci-fi or fantasy shooter games are not big with me.
I do like the flight Sim games. I have Combat Flight Sim and it's a blast playing other people on the internet. But again, some of those guys need to get a life.

[f94gator]

I believe Starbucks teamed up with an ISP to provide its own wireless network out of various stores. Read something about it last time I was in there purchasing an overpriced coffee.

[richhermes]

****in A. I just looked it up on the Starbucks website. Damn near all the starbucks in Tampa have this wireless hookup.

They only offered this on the west coast about six months ago.

[Steel Shootin']

How does that hook-up work? The terms "wireless" and "hook-up" in the same sentence are an apparent contradiction.

[f94gator]

A wireless connection needs a site to transmit to it. You need to get in the area of one of these sites to get service. Just like a cell phone; phone doesn't do much good if it can't communicate with a tower.
I'm sure there are other services that will work from anywhere - probably whatever provides access for PDA's, but I'm not sure how that works.

[richhermes]

In essence, what Starbucks is doing is hooking up a wireless router to a broadband connection (modem) that is isolated from the store's POS network. They turn the IP range up to max and as soon as you're close enough to their router to get a connection you're "hooked-up" to the internet.
Hell, you could probably be in the parking lot of the Mall and still get a connection to the Starbucks system (depending on how strong their signal is.)
The drivers for your wireless NIC will show signal strength and available networks you can connect to. Pick the one with the stronger signal and BAM!

I used the term "hookup" more as slang than denoting a hardwire connection. "Access" would probably be a better word.

[Speargun]

Originally posted by Charlestondivin
Heck im sittin on the throne right now typing this wireless baby!

Oh Yeah. Well I'm driving down the road typing this right now!

....oops! I hope that was a mailbox? :D

[Charlestondivin]

You can get a WAN cards from sprint for about 100 bucks a month. I have heard of some of them getting as much as 320k transfer.

Almost all airports have wifi access now. If you are waiting on a flight just flip your laptop open and connect, check your mail, surf spearboard . :) Some airports charge and others do not.
Wifi at starbucks will cost you .10 per minute unless you sign up for the 40 bucks a month unlimited access from them.

Check out some of the wardriving sites. These guys drive around with a program called Net stumbler that has the ability to interface with a gps unit. They map out wifi areas that have open access and share the data. Where ever you are they can show you the nearest "hot spot" Drive around your neighborhood with this you might be surprised.
http://www.netstumbler.com/

I use netstubler at work to map out Wifi coverage for different areas and find out where to put access points and repeaters for best coverage. Cool stuff.

[Steel Shootin']

Here's an article on topic: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/03/18/wireless.show.ap/index.html

Since investigating this issue for my friend, I got so interested in wireless that I decided to do a wireless network for my house. I bought a Netgear Wireless Router. I was in the market for a new laptop, since I had just given mine to my wife, so got the new Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC, with integrated Wifi. I've got my computer guy now putting a transmitter in my office, so when I take the laptop back and forth, I have network and internet capabilities. It is awesome.

By the way, for you guys interested in the Tablet PC, and Windows Tablet XP, it is great. I was very skeptical, especially with this being new, but it works great. I love being able to write notes directly onto my PC. I went with the Toshiba because of all the tablets, it's 1.33 Mhz is the fastest on the market. Plenty fast enough for me to work with all my applications, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Here's a link: http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/pr/download/flash/portege_3500_product_tour/intro.html

[richhermes]

Is that integrated WiFi, replaceable?
What if the WiFi NIC takes a dump? Can you replace it?

"Integrated" anything always scares me when it comes to pc's.

(I see you went from buying scuba gear to buying pc gear!):D:D:D

Wireless rocks!

[Steel Shootin']

I would imagine it's replaceable. In any event, it sure beats the non-integrated solution, which is to put the receiver in a PCMCIA slot, with the antenna hanging out of the side.

Had my old laptop for three years, so I was due!

[richhermes]

Yeah, I have mine in the PCMCIA slot.
Have you tested the range yet? I want to, but don't want to look like a geek walking down the street with my laptop and seeing when my connection dies.

Now you need to use your old laptop as a DirecTV emulator. Get free DirecTV. We have a guy in the office that does this. Everytime they send the hit to disable bad cards he just reboots his PC and he's back watching TV.

[Steel Shootin']

He uses WiFi to get direct TV?

The connection on the new Tablet PC, with the integrated WiFi, is better than the Netgear PCMCIA that I put in my old laptop. I have a strong signal in most of the house, and good in all of the house. I haven't walked down the street yet, but believe it or not, from inside my house I was picking up someone else's wireless network. BTW, I have encryption on, which is important with these things.

[Charlestondivin]

It is funny you mention that tablet Scott. Mine should be here today.

Integrated wireless on most laptops is not built onto the motherboard but is a card. You pop off a small panel on the back and replace the wireless card if needed. Very little can go wrong with a wireless card itself and it would usually be under warranty anyway. Also integrated wireless usually gets a better signal than a pcmcia card unless you hook up a extra antenna.

With my dlink 1000+ access points and Dlink ant24-0500 yagi antennas I can reach a good 400 yards with line of sight to my integrated wireless on my laptop. Directional antennas help even more.

Everything integrated is the way to go now adays. All the computers i build for work have everything built on. Network interface, sound card, video, firewire, etc. No devices conflicting and all the drivers in one place. Makes life easier.

Make sure you enable WEP, change the default password, upgrade the firmware, change the ip address of the router.
Change the dhcp range a little bit and configure dhcp to only lease out IP's to the exact number of wireless devices you have.

Wep is crackable but doing the steps above will make you a harder target.

[richhermes]

Funny! How some people leave themselves wide open that way.

I enabled 128 bit encryption too. It was a pain in the ass copying the passphrase to the pc, but it works awesome.