Wireless LAN solutions ?

[nickdakick]

..for a home LAN. Have to be affordable, 200$ max. I can't purchase in the US therefore I don't need shops just products that maybe available over here. Thanks in advance.

 

[Porkstoner]

Are you based in the UK?

I have been looking into this myself, I posted a thread yesterday asking for people to recomend cards they have used on the new 11 mbs standard.

One guy recomended Cisco Aironet cards, I can't find anyone who stocks them in the uk, insight will order them, but the cards start at £120 and go up to £260 !! Which is a little out of my price range.

IBM and Intel both make cards but they are a little bit pricey still

 

[Eug]

Does it have to be wireless? I'm thinking wireless myself only because I want to roam around the house with a laptop. If you don't need wireless perhaps HomePNA 2 would do it for you. Uses standard phone lines.

 

[nickdakick]

porkstoner check my profile: it isn't fake.

Eug sounds interesting. Any more specific ? Point is my wife would kill me if I wanted to cat5 our flat, dasm it.

 

[nickdakick]

Found this for about 125 ?, any good ?

 

[Eug]

Well, I'm a networking newbie, and I haven't used any of these things. (I've only demo'd the Airport with an iBook wirelessly.)

All I can say is that for Home PNA make sure you're getting the most recent 2.0 standard stuff, since it runs up to theoretically 10 Mbps (reality more like 4 apparently). The old standard didn't even hit 1 Mbps. I dunno much about the individual brands though. Netgear (I think) is also selling a box which converts 10BaseT to telephone lines as well, for those people who already have standard RJ45 10BaseT jacks in their computer (ie. laptop users). (The cards HomePNA provides give you an RJ11 jack that you plug directly into the phone line.)

By the way, you can still use your phone, and apparently use DSL too at the same time.

That said, I personally am looking into wireless with an Apple Airport.