I’m thinking of setting up a wireless network in my house mainly because I’ll be on bed rest for a week and I’d like to be able to surf the web, blog, and twitter from my iPod Touch.
Admittedly, I’m not too familiar with wireless and would love to get some feedback on the best way to do it. Would you use a wireless router? If so, what brand? etc. The router/access point would be in the room adjacent to my bedroom, so range shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Tips, tricks, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated! You can either leave a comment here or contact me by filling out the form to send me an e-mail. Thanks in advance.
You might as well get an Apple Airport Extreme. You can also use it as a switch too since it has 4 ports for other computers. It also allows you to use it as a print server or a NAS if you put on a USB HD.
It’s got really good signal strength and you’ll want that once you pick up your future Apple portable…. LOL.
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt I’m thinking of setting up a wireless network in my house mainly because I’ll be on bed rest for a week and I’d like to be able to surf the web, blog, and twitter from my iPod Touch. Admittedly, I’m not too familiar with wireless and would love to get some feedback on the best way to do it. Would you use a wireless router? If so, what brand? etc. The router/access point would be in the room adjacent to my bedroom, so range shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Tips, tricks, or recommendations wo [...]
I second the recommendation to get an airport extreme. I have one that I still need to open, but i’m excited. It has the draft n specification so you can do fast transfers within your network.
I am going to do a review on it when i open it up soon and i’ll keep you informed! It’s expensive but as kimonostereo says it can be attached to a USB HD and serve your entire network of macs…lol
anyway, go for it!
oh, yes, gambate on the upcoming exciting events!
The Airport Extreme is a great router to get but it’s out of my price range (and I don’t have any N equipment anyway, although I do have one Gigabit computer). If 802.11g and 10/100 is enough (for Internet access at home it ought to be, although for stuff over the LAN, N and Gigabit are better), I’d suggest getting a Buffalo or Linksys flashable router and putting ddwrt on it. I have two Buffalo routers at home (bridged so I have coverage all over the house) like this and they’ve been flawless.
I’ll agree with getting an airport extreme. I’d like to get one myself, but just haven’t gotten around to it. I’m using a linksys at the moment and we use it with great results. we almost never go into the computer room anymore and spend most of our time on our laptops.
We have the Linksys WRT45G, in case you’re wondering.
- j – well, i guess at this point, my advice will just be redundant. I’ve had lots of different wireless routers, and Apple routers have proven to be the easiest and most reliable routers thus far. So, I vote for Apple, too!
Wow. Judging by the comments so far I guess you’re getting an Airport Extreme.
(Btw, I have one of those too. Quite reliable and works with a MacBook, iBook, a laptop running Windows XP and one running Vista.)
Hmm, since it sounds like the motivation here is to use the Touch, I’d say getting any N router is going to be overkill. You’ll pay a 80% premium (over the regular airport) for a feature set you wont be using.
If you were planning to swap out your existing router, almost anything will work. It sounds like a good excuse to upgrade that crusty old linksys anyways. you could replace it with a linksys WRT54G, which has a pretty long track record. Recently I’ve been buying the mid-range white netgear WGT6×4 router for generic use, and some of the higher end FVxyyy models for dedicated VPN use. They all seem to work just fine.
I typically use routers for things that are WAY beyond their design specifications, so I might not be the right person to render advice in this case.
OR, if you just need a G router that works, you can have one of my spare Belkins…
I’ve played a little with the Linksys stuff (802.11g router and WAP) at work. They work great plus they add another firewall security layer. But then again, I’m not sure if they work in the Apple world.
A Linksys will work; it’s just TCP/IP. I would be stunned if any router made in the last five or so years didn’t work, and even the ones that were made a long time ago that were only Windows were that way only for setup; once it was setup, they’ll work with anything TCP/IP.
While I acknowledge the Airport Extreme is expensive (definitely out of my price range for now), it’s actually very competitively priced with other similar (Gigabit, N, with USB port for NAS and/or printers) routers from Linksys, Belkin, and others.