Basic Q's about wireless router
 

I need to get a wireless router because we're about to get a second computer for our home (G4 and iMac).Been using a USB connection with the G4 for ages.
Can someone answer these basic questions?
1) How do they work?
2) Where do you put them?
3) No wires,really?
4) Do they make a noise? (hum/bleeps etc) Important!
5) Recommendations? Cost? Lifespan?
NB We live in a very rural part of the UK with max.0.5 Mb coming down the ADSL wire.

You run the USB or ethernet wire (most use ethernet) from your cable/dsl modem to the "wireless" router. Often these routers also have a four port ethernet switch built in so you can both use computers that don't have wireless capabilities and manage the router to set up wireless, passwords, etc. They make no noise, and since they're basically small computers without disk drives or other moving parts, they should last for a very long time, assuming no electrical spikes.

1) How do they work?
They work just like a lot of wireless devices, sending and receiving packets of information via RF signals. They also act as a gateway between your network and the internet, allowing multiple computers to have access to the internet.

2) Where do you put them?
A good rule of thumb is to keep your wireless router or access point with in 50 feet of your computers, but you can get decent signal up to 150 feet.

3) No wires,really?
Yup, really. However in your case you will need to obtain either a USB wireless adapter for your older G4 or get a hold of the original airport card. I would offer to sell mine but I just sold my last airport card.

4) Do they make a noise? (hum/bleeps etc) Important!
Nope, they are silent.

5) Recommendations? Cost? Lifespan?
I personally recommend either Buffalo or Linksys routers. I have used both and have had excellent experiences with both. Cost would be about $50USD so probably half that in pounds but not sure if the costs actually translate into the UK market like that. Lifespan - My original linksys router I bought back in year 2000 still works and the only reason why I am not using it is because I upgraded to a newer one with wireless.

Almost any router will do, but Linksys is the one router that I will never buy. At least not until they change their support policies regarding Macs.

It's true that Linksys will work with the Mac, but in the past, I've had Linksys tech support specifically tell me that they do not support Macs. I just checked their web site and found support for Windows Vista, but no mention of Macs or OS X. I did find lots of complaints in their forums about Linksys supporting only Windows specific webcams and not working well with Safari, among other things.

i would reccomend a belkin router, but im not sure if they are only based in europe. Then again it would be useful to maybe look for a router which had b g and n. I guess the best for macs would be the apple airport extreme base station. It has the useful ability of being able to plug in a usb device such as a printer or external hd and make it available on a local network. And btw who is your service provider? (BT Bulldog.. etc)

I'm also looking for something to allow both Macs to use the same printer-so would the Airport Extreme or similar be the best choice in that scenario?
How do I go about getting an Airport card? Are they straightforward to install?
Our service provider is Tiscali,btw,kel101-and I'm in Europe.

Search the Apple store for an Airport Extreme card. They've got them (in the US online store) for $49. If you don't mind a refurb: $29. It slides in a card slot in your G4, and you connect the antenna that's in your G4 to one end of the card.

hmm tiscili arnt the most reliable, can you get bulldog, talk talk or even sky broadband, their faster and more reliable

zzzuuppp, my recommendation for ADSL in the UK would be KeConnect.

I have used many ISPs (BT, Tiscali, Virgin, Freedom2Surf) and they are truly the best. Small company, but when you ring up with problems or questions the phone is quickly answered and their response is nothing short of fantastic. Not the cheapest but not expensive either. Personally I would avoid Talk Talk, Sky and Orange. The bundled deals they are offering are hugely oversubscribed, dreadful contention ratios and customer service is a joke; this is all feedback from various clients.

As for your router ... well I install systems for home and business so I do a lot of this. Netgear/Linksys/Belkin are all good. Personally I use a BT wireless router but that's because it was cheapest at the time; I've had that around 3 years with no problems. Buy a router from www.ebuyer.com and save yourself a packet over PC World/Currys etc. Cost shouldn't be more than about £40-60. Something like this would do fine for basic networking requirements.

Connectivity-wise, my router sits on the end of a phone extension rather than the main socket which BT will tell you is not ideal, but if it picks up the signal and is reliable then put it where it's best for you. In my three-storey house it's on the second floor (office), and wireless can be picked up in any room in the house/garden/car on drive. I've got two hard-wired clients connected to it permanently, and two wireless devices connected permanently. There is no noise from the router or clients (well, not the Macs anyway - both PCs make a racket...). Connection speed won't matter; I've just moved from rural South Cambs to slightly less rural South Cambs and gone from 0.5mb to 3.5mb - makes no odds.

Thanks for your tips folks-I am thinking Airport now because of sharing printers.Can someone confirm that Airport Extreme OR Express will do both jobs (wireless router/printer sharing) without the need for a separate router?
(Q-is a router going to make any difference to my DSL speed? A BT engineer told me candidly that the wiring in my neck of the woods wouldn't get upgraded and wouldn't get above 0.5 max).
Tiscali,after an initial period of the horrors with them,have been..OK,but they hadn't got any special Mac support last time I looked.I haven't had any issue with them for c.2 years,so reluctant to migrate just yet,and they are useful/cheap for ordinary phonecalls.But I'll bear your recommendations in mind.;)

Is Apple's word good enough? ;)
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/...ivingroom.html
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/sharing.html

some facts I think that should be presented before you make your decision.

1) Your older G4 will not take an airport extreme card, it will only take the original airport card. Apple made the slot different. You'll most likely be forced to buy some sort of USB wifi adapter, or get what is called a wireless Ethernet bridge. The aeropad mini does exactly that and I have set several up for clients in the past. http://www.drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?code=3322-APMW

2) Linksys routers have no problems with Macintosh computers. I work IT for a living and do tons of side/sub/independent contract work on the side. I have set up countless Linksys routers on mac networks and they all work flawlessly.

3) Linksys and Buffalo are both based of broadcomm hardware, so they are essentially the same router. The one thing I like about some of the Linksys and buffalo routers is that they are generous with their memory. The new buffalo routers come with 32MB of RAM in them, which is very nice for a consumer level router. They also support a plethora of third party firmware which makes them very configurable.

4) Print servers, I must admit I have had some issues with this myself in the past with OS X, and really I think it is more of a design problem than anything. You see HP, Epson, Canon, etc all write these nice little application/drivers in cocoa or carbon and that is how the mac interacts with it. Now OS X, uses CUPS for network printing, and a lot of times these drivers do not support that. I have had to install and go the open source driver route a few times getting this to work. You can check out this link here if you run into any snags, http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/

Now, personally I do not like apple networking hardware. It is way over priced and their functionality is limited. However, it would offer exactly what you want and perhaps maybe be a bit easier to set up. I for one would not use apple networking hardware at all. We tried using some airport base stations at my work and they just caused all sorts of issues, so we ditched them completely. Then again, you'd probably never run into the issues we had because you are setting up a small private network. You may be best off just sharing the printers over the network and not even fussing with a print server.

Oops! Tlarkin is right. The G4s only take Airport 802.11b cards, not extreme. It says it right there in Mactracker. I don't know how I missed it. :o

As for Linksys, the routers do work with Macs, but the company doesn't. The routers work because they're using web standards for the most part. Where they don't stick to web standards, they're decidedly Microsoft centric, and they make no apologies for it. It just doesn't make sense to me to support a company that won't support my platform. That's especially true when there are so many alternatives that do provide tech support for the Mac, and that don't have a problem with Safari or Mac web cameras.

I'm not a big fan of Airport base stations (they don't give a techie near enough control over the details) either, but they do seem to be the best fit for what you want. Dlink has a router that can do the same in their DI-724U but I haven't tried it so I can't say how good it is. An alternative is as Tlarkin says, share a printer over the network, but that requires that the computer it's connected to is on whenever anyone wants to print.

So are you saying:-
-I could use Airport Express but not Extreme?
-I need an Airport 802.11b card,plus(?) the wireless ethernet bridge (Or did you mean the bridge will substitute for the card?).Am I obliged to get the bridge-is the G4 as it is incompatible with (say) an iMac?
I think expense is less important to me at the moment than simplicity...:D

You could use an Airport 802.11b card on your Mac and connect with any Airport base station or wireless router, but 802.11b is slower than 802.11g or 802.11n so you might want to go with a wireless ethernet bridge instead of the card.

Either way, you still need a wireless router.

So,in summary,I need (eg)
-Wireless ethernet bridge
-Airport Express (which incorporates wireless router?)
and I then DON'T need card or another wireless router.Am I right?

I'm thinking Express for economy sake.Or should I splash out on Airport Extreme?

correct your new imac should come with wifi built in. The G routers are backwards compatible so any G router will do. They you will have to buy either a usb wifi device or one of those ethernet to wifi bridge devices that I linked earlier in the thread.

OK I'm muddled what's a 'G' router?
Please confirm the exact things I need to get in addition to the iMac:D
1) Airport Express
2) Bridge,like you mentioned before
3) ? anything else?

There are different versions of 802.11 wireless networking. There are 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n routers and the speed gets faster with each generation. They're backwards compatible though, so an 802.11n router should have no problem communicating with an 802.11a card if you got one for your G4, but it won't go any faster than 802.11a, which is why you might want to get a wireless ethernet bridge at 802.11g or n.

i checked their site, it all seems good untill i saw its £24 and theres still a download limit thats why i recommend bulldog, their cheaper and have no limits, im sure keconnects customer service is far better then bulldog's, but at the end of the day id say unlimited downloads is a far better selling point :D

So,cwtnospam,do I need a wireless card for the G4 ANYWAY? as well as the Bridge and Router?
I repeat:-
Please,someone, confirm the exact things I need to get in addition to the iMac!
1) Airport Express (eg)
2) Bridge
3) ? anything else?


And thank you all for all your help:)

Your G4 needs some sort of wireless adapter or wireless to ethernet bridge, which turns your built in ethernet port into a wireless adapter basically. Then you will need to purchase a router. Once the router is in place and working you can connect each machine to it over the wireless.

so something like this may work

http://www.provantage.com/hawking-te...a~7HAUD002.htm


Or, you can just run a CAT 5 cable from your router to your G4. Because all wireless routers also at least come with a built in 4 port switch. You don't have to go wireless as long as you are okay with either 1) running a cable from your router to your G4 or 2) keeping your router near your G4.

So in essence can I get by with a wireless to ethernet bridge for my G4,plus Airport Express functioning as router and print controller for both Macs? and nothing else?

Don't forget your dsl modem. :)

yup

but your printers must support printing to a network printer, ie the driver must. Or you will have to share the printers like mentioned earlier.

OK,thanks.
I have a DSL Modem-(Speedtouch 330)-at least I bloody well hope it's a DSL modem:D
and just the one printer,HP PSC 1210 AiO,although we're thinking of going laser.Can you get laser all-in-ones,reasonably priced? and will they fit this particular scenario?

honestly, I haven't had much luck with network printers on OS X unless the printer itself was designed to be networked. I have had to always download the open source drivers.

However, you can still hook them up and share them through printer sharing in OS X, the print server part just may not work.

I can't help but feel you're all complicating things when it isn't needed; you may have better insight than me but here's my take on it.

I have a WLAN setup, with two Macs running 10.4.10.

I also have an HP PSC 1205 connected to my iMac via USB.

My MacBook can print directly to this whilst connected via my WLAN, which uses a cheap and cheerful BT Voyager 2100 ADSL Modem Router.

Unless I've missed something (I may well have), why does it need to be any more complicated than this? Get the G4 wireless enabled or cable it to the router (ditch the speedtouch 330 imo), and that's it isn't it?

edit: admittedly my iMac must be turned on for the printer to be able to function but it's a much simpler setup for someone who - no offence zzzuppp - doesn't appear to be all that techy.

fair comment. I don't download all that much so it's not really that big a factor. I'd sooner know that they're going to pick up the phone if I have a problem :).

That is what I was referring to with sharing printers. With a print server you could print to it no matter what, and no machine would have to be connected to the printer and turned on for it to work.

OK,thank you everyone, I need some clarification now.
I have just bought a 2.16Gb Intel iMac.(Arriving next week sometime).
In summary,in the light of what aardtech has said,seems like I need to,in the simplest scenario,cable my G4 to the router (Speedtouch 330 USB DSL modem)? (It already is...?) or get it wireless enabled using a 'bridge'.Do I still need the wireless router? I'm puzzled...
What might be wrong with the Speedtouch 330 USB DSL modem?
How do I set up a WLAN?
Can someone suggest a simple and fairly uncostly solution to all this? (ie a way of getting a DSL signal to our two Macs,and hopefully getting one printer to print from both.)

The router handles the WAN.

Maybe a diagram will help. Here's one way to do it:

A picture is worth 1000 words.Thanks cwtnospam.
So I need the wireless bridge,for the G4 (ie LH Mac in the pic),plus a router,right?
In your pic,the RH G4type Mac is wired to the router.Is that just an example-so that our iMac,eg,doesn't need wiring,can be wireless,like the laptop on the RHS?
Is there any reason I'd need to change the existing Speedtouch 330 modem?
Would something like this-http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=111307&partner=froogle-do for the wireless adapter for the G4 or does it need special drivers or is it incompatible with Mac,etc?
Or this? http://www.computerwarehouse.co.uk/d...36736911296852
And would either of those work with the router that aardtech suggested?-http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/52244

Right.

The RH G4 is just an example. The point is that most wireless routers have ethernet ports so you can connect either way.

Wireless bridges don't need drivers. They just take the ethernet signal they receive and transmit it wirelessly, and they take the wireless signals and transmit them over ethernet.

Thanks
Can you confirm that those three links I gave are the right kind of thing?
Also,what kind of connectors would I need for Modem-router; and G4 to adapter?

Yes, they should work. Wiring is all ethernet, preferably Category 5 or 6. You can get them made to almost any length, up to their limits, which home users need not worry about approaching.

Do you mean wireless local area network

or

wide area network?

Thanks tlarkin,doesn't matter now:)
Re: ethernet cables-the socket looks just like a standard UK phone socket-does that mean that ethernet cables are the same as phone cables? (I'm assuming not,but thought I'd ask).Does anyone know whether routers/adapters ship with ethernet cables included or do I need to order them separately?
Next Q: when I get the new Mac/router/adapter and cables all together,is the setup straightforward-plug and play- or do I need to know special codes/numbers etc?

I don't know about UK phones.

Some routers ship with a cable, but some don't. You'll probably need two at least. One to go from the cable modem to the router, and another to go from the G4 to the bridge, or to the router.

Everything is fairly straightforward. You will need to connect via ethernet to set up the router's wireless portion. It may be turned on by default, but at a minimum you'll want to set some sort of security on it.

well I am not sure about UK standards, but in the US phone jacks are RJ11 connectors and Ethernet cable is RJ45, so they both look exactly the same except one jack is slightly bigger (more wires) than the other. So it should look almost the same.

Every router I have ever cracked open out of the box has at least one ethernet patch cable in it. However, some of the cheaper ones may not come with anything, I am not 100% on that.

There should be a quick set up guide with pictures that shows you how to hook it up. It is very straight forward. you mentioned you lived in the country earlier? How close is your nearest neighbor, in feet? I only ask because if no one is close to your house at all, there is really no need to secure your wifi network. though, slapping some kind of security is probably better than leaving it wide open.

For example I set up a network for someone right outside of town. They had many acres of land and their nearest neighbor was like 3,000 feet away. So I just left their wifi network wide open, that way they would never have to mess with security.

My nearest neighbour is 85 years old,next nearest is 65,both single women without computers.;)
Next to them is a family with their own wifi-they're approx.100 yards away.Other than them,just squirrels and badgers :)
Thank you all very much for your help.I'll be back if I can't get it to function.;)

well I don't trust badgers, so maybe you should secure it:D

:D
One more question-the Macsense adapter seems to be unavailable.Would this do?-http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-802-1.../dp/B0002AGJOE

that looks like pretty much the same thing as the areopad I listed previously. Just make sure you carefully read the instructions because each adapter is different to set up.

I've just set up the router and bridge with my G4,and it works fantastically!Just waiting for the iMac to be delivered now.
Many thanks for all your help!:)