Newbie Home Network Question

[Ken]

Hi. I've been using a 56K dial-up Internet connection for a long time.
I've finally decided to move on up to broadband cable modem. Our
house has two computers that access the Internet, one belonging to me
and one to my wife. I have a Pentium 4 running XP, and she has a Mac
G3 notebook running OS X. Both have Ethernet cards built-in and
available USB ports.

My goal is to subscribe to a cable modem service (comcast is all that's
offerred around here--DSL is not available), and use a wireless router
home network to get the service to the two computers. I'm a total
newbie at this. I sort of understand that I'll need to connect a cable
modem to our cable line, connect a wireless router to the cable modem,
and give each computer some sort of wireless adapter. And I'll need to
buy firewire software. But that's the extent of my knowledge. Can
someone provide advice or point me to a good FAQ on the topic? I
looked on CNET.com, but their Wirless Network 101 article is dated
2003. At the rate technology changes, I figure I should look up
something more recent.

Thanks for any info!

Ken

[Yousuf Khan]

Ken wrote: Hi. I've been using a 56K dial-up Internet connection for a long time. I've finally decided to move on up to broadband cable modem. Our house has two computers that access the Internet, one belonging to me and one to my wife. I have a Pentium 4 running XP, and she has a Mac G3 notebook running OS X. Both have Ethernet cards built-in and available USB ports. My goal is to subscribe to a cable modem service (comcast is all that's offerred around here--DSL is not available), and use a wireless router home network to get the service to the two computers. I'm a total newbie at this. I sort of understand that I'll need to connect a cable modem to our cable line, connect a wireless router to the cable modem, and give each computer some sort of wireless adapter. And I'll need to buy firewire software. But that's the extent of my knowledge. Can someone provide advice or point me to a good FAQ on the topic? I looked on CNET.com, but their Wirless Network 101 article is dated 2003. At the rate technology changes, I figure I should look up something more recent.

You seem to have gotten the gist of it, and no, things really haven't
changed all of that much since 2003.

I would suggest, since you have ethernet built into both computers, you
connect them to the router via the ethernet, initially. Then after a
little while, you can purchase wireless networking equipment for them.
I'd say there's no reason to take your P4 PC out of the ethernet, and
into wireless, since it's going to be in the same place all of the time
anyways. However, the G3 Mac laptop can benefit from wireless as you can
take it to various rooms in the house as much as you like.

I never bother putting desktop PCs on wireless, unless they are far away
from the router. The ethernet connections are much faster, and more
secure than the wireless connections. Also if you ever find that you
need to upgrade the firmware of your router, then you have to do it
through the ethernet connection, not through a wireless connection.

Yousuf Khan