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#1 2003-01-26 7:57 pm
Generic Wireless Networkin Questions
Ok, so soon i'm gonna be getting cable. I live in a big house so running wires all over the place isn't an option. I have a G4 and a Powerbook G4, and my dad and sister have PC's. So my parents decided that we should go wireless. We've already gotten some equipment. I've gotten an Airport card for my tower, a PCMCIA wireless networking card from Belkin (model number F5D6020) for my pa's PC, a Belkin wireless desktop PCI network adapter (model number F5D6000) also for my dad's PC, and a wireless cable/dsl gateway router from Belkin (model number F5D6230-3). If all goes well i'll be gettin another card and adapter for my sisters computer. The cable company is going to provide us with a cable modem when we decide to get cable.
My question is when we get the modem, how is this setup going to work? From what I understand, I just have to connect the coaxial cable from the wall into the modem, then connect the modem to the wireless router. From there each computer should be able to connect to the routers signal.
Is there much i'm missing? I know I have to configure the router at some point.
A side note:
Also, we did decide to get cable a couple of weeks ago, so we went to the company to get a self install kit, but they had just run out of em. So they were going to install it in our house on the next friday. So friday came about and they 'tried' installing it. They spent ~2 hours at my house installing it. But my dad's computer (Windows 95 machine, which supports the PCI card and wireless card) didn't have the minimum requirements to use the internet. But I know of friends that have ol' 286's on the net via ethernet and a cable modem. I guess they have some sort of prepiority software that he "needs" to "use" the internet. After they left my dad noticed a big preformance decrease on his computer (takes forever to load and doesn't even shut down some times, and is slow as hell). So another question of mine is that will his computer be able to recieve the signal even without this software, the PCMCIA card came with networking software for windows 95 so I guess it will, right?
Help would be appriciated greatly.
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#2 2003-01-26 9:50 pm
Re: Generic Wireless Networkin Questions
Your assumption is correct, all you need is to hook the coax to the cable modem, and then connect the cable modem to a wireless router. Of course, there will be some basic setup settings you'll need to make to the router via its admin control panel (usually accessed via a browser and an internal IP address). You'll probably want to use DHCP for assigning the IP addresses, which is setup in the router. Then you'll need to make sure each computer has the correct drivers for the specific card they have and that the internet connection on each computer is using said card and DHCP.
There should be no software that I can think of you need to have installed on any computer, Windows or Mac to access your Internet connection, so I have no idea what they installed on that Win95 machine. If its not the networking protocol and driver for the wireless card, try removing it and see if it will connect.
Many cable companies have a piece of software they will give you that will allow you to manage your Internet account, such as adding additional email addresses and changing passwords. Other than that, you shouldn't need any software from the cable company, and even that doesn't have to be installed.
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