TSGL: How to get internet on our terrace/deck ?

[H Davis]

Tilman,

Just replace your current router (which I assume is not a wireless 
router) with a wireless version. Most of these units also have several 
Ethernet connectors on the back. You can plug your existing cat 5 cables 
in there. Add wireless cards, either internally or using the USB 
connections to your computers and they can connect wirelessly anywhere 
in the house. Your laptops probably already have wireless cards in them.

Upside for wireless is no cables, greater portability for laptops. 
Downside, less secure, harder to get working because of security 
concerns, slower than Ethernet. Ethernet max throughput is 100 
Mbits/sec; wireless is 54 Mbits/sec for the "g" variant. My real world 
throughput on Ethernet is about 75 Mbits/sec and about 25 Mbits/sec on 
the wireless path (plenty fast for internet use). The wireless 
throughput will obviously vary depending on your geography - distance, 
presence of interfering metallic structures, etc. The "n" variant is 
faster but, so far, non-standard. If you already have wireless cards in 
your laptops they are almost certainly "g" versions unless the laptop is 
very new.

Cost is about $50 US for a wireless router with 4 Ethernet ports; maybe 
$15 for a wireless card for each computer that doesn't have one.

Other neat things you can do, if you haven't already, are: Get a network 
ready printer and plug it into the router. You can then print using this 
printer from any computer. Leave the router and printer on all the time 
so they will always be ready. Get some Network Attached Storage (a fancy 
name for an external disk drive with a small computing chip in the 
case). This also plugs into one of the Ethernet ports and can be made to 
look like another drive on any or all of your computers. These things 
are cheap $150 or less for a homeowner type with 500 GB. Leave this on 
all the time also (they can be set to spin down, but not turn off after 
a period of non-use) and you have a place to back up everything or a 
common place to store the family photos. With the photos on the NAS 
drive you can view them on any of your computers any time without 
requiring the computer they are now on to be powered up while viewing on 
a different computer.

My set up is 2 desktops connected by Ethernet cable (Cat5) to a Linksys 
WRT54G wireless router (it has 4 Ethernet ports on the back). One laptop 
about 40 ft away connected wirelessly. A 500 GB NAS drive (just got this 
a few weeks ago) which I'm using as a backup medium and a place to swap 
stuff between machines. The NAS drive stays on all the time. We turn our 
computers off at night so if the common shared folder is on one of the 
machines, and that machine is off, there can be no sharing. Very 
frustrating. With the NAS on all the time, anyone can put stuff on it 
even if the other machines are off.

The same holds true for a printer. If your printer is connected to one 
of your machines and shared, that machine must be on to use it. If it is 
a network printer and on all the time, it's always available to any 
machine. I don't have one of these yet, I'm waiting for my old Xerox 
printer to die. The extra cost for network-ability is not great.

As you can see, I'm enthusiastic about your project because I've been 
moving in this same direction for about a year now, adding one piece at 
a time as money and time has allowed. If I've made any sense let me know 
and I can add more detail if you are interested. Also, I'm sure others 
in this group know more about this than I do, so see if anyone else 
chimes in. Raymond is the network guru but I haven't seen him for a 
while. He had a couple of answers for me about some pretty arcane stuff 
a while back.

HTH

H Davis

Tilman Brandl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to have internet access in our living room and possibly our terrace too.
>
> What we have now:
>
> Cable modem + D-Link router with a 4x hub, connected into 4 different rooms/studies via appropriate Cat5 (I believe) cabling.
>     _______     _______
>     |            |    |           |----- PC 1
> ->-|   CM    |----|   RT    |----- PC 2
>     |            |    |           |----- free 3
>     |_______|    |______|----- free 4
>
> When we had this installed, we didn't think we would ever use a computer elsewhere, therefore no access in our livingroom and outside... 
>
> Meanwhile we had to replace the living room CRT TV with a big LCD-set, and would like for instance to show our picture gallery there from DVD/CD, and - consequently - have an internet option too. All our holiday photographs are on the web for the family to see...
>
> QUESTION:
> * Is there a way to add wireless functionality to what we already have? like an additional w-lan router - without touching the rest of the network much? 
> * can one connect a wireless router to an existing router like ours? Or what else ...?
> * would adding a wireless router render the whole cable network useless? I figure it would at least cost me the router + an additional wireless device for each of our computers (meanwhile 2 + laptop, the latter is not part of our network now). I would also hate to have to retire the cable network which wasn't really cheap a few years ago...
>
> An alternative of course would be to add new cabling from the existing router into our living room (~12 m) and onto the terrace (15-20 m). Not really comfortable, this would limit the places where we could use e.g. the laptop outdoors and also in the living room.
>
> Besides the functionality we want, other criteria are 
> * how easy to install
> * comfort of use
> * costs (to some extent)
>
> I would appreciate any ideas you might come up with
>
> Tilman
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-- 
H Davis   hdavis1 at gmail.com