WiFi, XP Pro, user accounts, and more!

[Revolutionary]

Hey! Thanks for looking!

Here's the situation: just got a new laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600 -- "Mmmm, 15.4 inch wide-screen and 4x DVD burner...[Homer Simpson drool sound].")

It runs Win XP Pro (necessary: got the LT for law school) and uses the default Intel Pro/Wireless 802.11b antenna to log onto my schools network (has to be this or a Cisco Aironet for school, as they use LEAP).

I also have a D-Link DI-624 wireless router and access point at home. This is prototype 802.11e (108Mbps). To take advantage of its speed, I need to use the D-Link GWL-G650 CardBus antenna. Otherwise I am limited to 802.11b transfer speeds, and I plan to use this setup to stream video from PC to LT to TV, and acceess the DVD burner on the LT through LAN. Hence, the 108Mbps sounds good to me. Also, my home PC will remain wired through the 10/100 ports on the router. That machine uses XP Home (and I don't want to have to upgrade).

Here are my questions.

1. Can I network an XP Pro and an XP Home PC on the same LAN? If so, do all user accounts have to be local, so that there is no domain and thus no OS conflict on the domain?

2. Can I configure separate user accounts to automatically access the appropriate hardware for the current WAN? In other words, can I/how do I create one user account that has access to the Intel-B antenna and not the D-Link antenna, and thus is able to log onto the network at school, and another user account that has the Intel-B antenna disabled, and instead logs onto my faster home network when I have the D-Link antenna installed? Perhaps I have to create hardware profiles and link those profiles to each user account? That's what I'd like to do, but I can't seem to create a new hardware profile.

The benefit of doing this, if its possible, is that I don't have to manually disable the Intel antenna before I insert the D-Link antenna. That's really all I want to be able to do. Will Windows perhaps default to the D-Link connection if both are installed and neither is disabled? Might I be able to deny the Intel antenna access to my network via the router? That seems to be linked to "devices," though, and I'm sure if the computer is the device, or if the antenna is.

I'm new to this networking thing and I don't want to screw things up, so any help is HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[rmrf]

1. Yes. It is fine to have local user accounts, or domain accounts. I have both on my network.

2. Set up hardware profiles. In each profile make sure the card that you want is enabled, and the card you don't want is disabled. To enable these hardware profiles, you will have to reboot each time you are going to switch and you can use the same user account for each hardware profile. One thing you should remember is that the 108 that you are getting out of your wireless router is total backplane bandwidth, unlike a wired network, where you will get a minimum of 200 Mbps backplane (just some side info).

hope thi helps :beer:

 

[Revolutionary]

Thanks. I just can't figure out how to create a new harware profile. There is no option to do so in System>Hardware>Harware Profiles.

I'll check microsoft's site...