[ILUG] Wireless LAN

[David Jamison]

Gareth Eason wrote:

 > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
 > Hash: SHA1
 >
 > Kae Verens wrote:
 > [munch...]
 > | couldn't live without my wireless net! every day, I go home and sit in
 > | the garden with my laptop for a bit. It's also handy to be able to work
 > | wherever I want (even sending email from teh toilet if need be ;) ).
 > [munch...]
 >
 >     WORP WORP WORP! The information line has now been crossed! This is at
 > least one very good reason not to have wireless in your house. I really
 > don't feel the need to be informed that people are having a poo while
 > IRC'ing or sending me an e-mail - thanks :-)
 >
 >     In all seriousness, I'm also a heavy user of wireless. My phone 
(Nokia
 > 9500) and all the laptops I use regularly support wireless (for Belkin
 > support under ndiswrapper check http://blog.signal2noise.co.uk/ in the
 > technical section) - though I've thankfully managed to cut down to
 > running one wireless Access Point now - I had two for a while.
 >
 >     Wireless - definitely the way to go :-)
 >
 >     Best regards,
 >     -->Gar

So Wireless seems to get a big vote of approval.

I suppose I should have said  that part of my thinking is to work 
towards having a central server with a his n hers laptop setup which can 
be used without the limitations of a cable being necessary or being tied 
to specific points within the house or garden.  A thing I hadnt thought 
about was the mobile phone (I have a Sony Ericsson P900) this holds my 
diary and contacts list and this could be wirelessly synched?

So in terms of hardware am I right in thinking that I need something 
like a NETGEAR WG602 54 Mbps Wireless Access Point  and (for the desktop 
machines) two wireless NICs a la NETGEAR WG311 54 Mbps Wireless PCI 
Adapter - network adapter.  Worryingly neither of these items mention 
anything other thatn MS OS's.  Will these play nice with Fedora Core 
4?   Cost seems to be around 60GBP for the WAP and 40GBP for the NICs  
does this seem reasonable?

Just thinking that as it stands the first pc will still have an 
umbilicial cable for the internet connection but the 2nd nic in this 
machine will be replaced by a wireless card or is there a way to 
hardwire the WAP to this machine to save the expense of a 2nd card?

Finally finally could the printer work wirelessly or am I asking too much?

Cheers

D