Wi-Fi

Callie and I have long used a Linksys cable router/4-port switch to share internet and network resources.

With the addition of a laptop to the geek family, I decided to add wireless. I picked up an Orinoco Silver wi-fi card earlier in the week (highly recommended for its range) and yesterday picked up the linksys wireless access point/4-port switch (so I can do fun things like add a linux box to the wired network and such). It took about 5 minutes to get the wi-fi access working, and another 10 minutes or so to turn off dhcp on the old router, uplink it to the wi-fi router's uplink port, and get everything talking. And voila -- a partially wired, partially wireless network that is sharing internet and resources perfectly.

If any of you are considering a wi-fi setup, I highly recommend the Linksys and the Orinoco Silver (not available on Amazon) combination (stay away from the linksys wi-fi card, as most reviews suggest it has had some range issues in the past). And the cool thing about the Linksys is that it has dual antennas, either or both of which can be removed and replaced with a stronger one, making it easy to set up a wireless node with fairly decent coverage (if you're into that sort of thing).

[Posted at 13:50 CST on 06/14/02] [Link]