Wireless networking

When I managed to pick up a laptop that was being disposed of, I decided it was time to go wireless. In my usual manner I went scrounging, and managed to persuade friends at work to lend me a wireless usb adapter, and a PCMCIA card. After fighting with it for a while, I had managed to share the internet connection from the Kitchen PC with the laptop.

I quickly popped to eBay for a more perminant solution, and managed to pick up a wireless router, and a PCMCIA card of my own. Both are the now outdated 802.11b 11Mbps standard, but for a total of around £20 I couldn't complain.

The PCMCIA card arrived quickly, and was a straight swap for the one I had borrowed. The router on the other hand had not arrived. It was coming internationally, and so I left it for a few weeks. Last week I finally contacted the seller and told him it hadn't arrived. He kindly offered a refund if it didn't appear shortly, and it didn't, so he did.

I managed to pick another one up, slightly more expensive, but it arrived in a day, and after a bit of messing it was installed last night.

As I already had an ADSL router I wanted to connect this more as a switch and access point, and this guide at Tom's Networking showed exactly the way to do it. Thanks Tom.

All working now, and much more reliable than the other access point, I'm writing this over the wireless now!