Wireless Networking

Wireless Networking has been around for years but it’s been very expensive and frankly not too reliable. This year marks the return of wireless networking to the home in a big way. Companies are now doing Wi-Fi networking…wireless protocol…that let’s you wirelessly network throughout the house and even share a single high-speed connection reliably and inexpensively. If you want to network in your home you’ll need to have a wireless card in each computer on your network. Wifi cards come in several flavors... a pc card for laptops and USB or internal card connections for desktops. If you want to have a Mac computer on your network as well, they call theirs the AirPort.

In order to share your high speed Internet connection you need what’s called a residential gateway. Its really just a simple router that takes your connection, whether its DSL or cable modem and transmits it all through the house up to a 300 foot radius, so anywhere within that area you’re going to pick up your high speed connection with either one of the PC network cards or the USB version for your desktop computer. For the USB connection expect to pay about $200, for the PC card about $99 and the same with your Apple AirPort card, again about $99.

But forget all that techno speak, wireless networking will transform the way you think about computing. Now you can go anywhere in your home and have access to any file on every computer on your network and share your high-speed connection. Wireless networking is definitely the wave of the future and the present.

Networking products

Compaq PC Card
The Compaq WL110 PC card provides high-speed wireless networking and secure access to network resources and the Internet. This card can be used in notebooks, the Compaq Thin Client T1010 and Compaq's iPAQ Pocket PC.



Compaq Wireless Gateway
The Compaq WL310 Wireless Home Office Gateway is a high-speed gateway which provides wireless connectivity to Internet Service Providers, and allows multiple users to share the same Internet connection. It enables users to easily and inexpensively set up a data network that allows them to share resources like files, scanners and printers, anywhere within the home or small office environment.

For more information on Compaq WiFi products visit www.compaq.com/products/wireless/wlan



Apple AirPort
AirPort is the wireless networking technology that lets you get on the Internet from anywhere in your home, school or office — without cables, additional phone lines, or complicated networking hardware. And AirPort is fast: With a data rate of up to 11 megabits per second (Mbps), AirPort enables high-speed wireless communications within a radius of approximately 150 feet from a base station. www.apple.com/airport