Wireless access points

[Shugster]

Hi all,

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with wireless access points.

We have 5 PC's at home... 1 Laptop, 2 Desktops and sadly 2 MACs, (The missus uses them for work). It seems that wireless support for MACs isn't that great, (I did get it to connect but the missus constantly whines that she sometimes has to unplug it and then plug it back in).
Obviously this is a totally unacceptable problem for any woman, so we've been using a long cable to plug straight in to the router.

I'm now starting to get cheesed off with tripping over cables, so an access point has become the only real alternative.

So after a long winded intro... Obviously I can plug an access point in to the PC, but can I plug the access point in to another router and feed a few PCs?

 

[NotAnIDOYet]

You can do this, if your main wireless router supports WDS then do a google search for your router type and settings.

You can use a second wireless router (I am doing this with 2 BT Home Hubs at the moment so I can printer share without a computer on)

 

[busby1971]

Other options

Other options

Wireless aint perfect but it is nice to have for your laptops so you can move around the house, a modem router dongle kit can be had for around £50, for a little bit more you could probably get a Mimo N1 (currently best wireless signal tech) router and couple of dongles for less than a ton.

Nothing wrong with Macs, sorry very biased, but if they are desk bound then why not get a home plug set up. More stable and faster than wireless but you'll need a plug per location, one to start of the network and one per base station, if your desktops are close to each other you could economise by plugging a wired router into on plug, then up to 4 puters into the router. If going the home plug route look out for AV 200mbs sets rather than the slower 85 or 15, you can get them cheap on amazon. They are plug and play and need very little input to set them up.