[Leica] Wireless Question

[marcsmall at comcast.net (Marc James Small)]

At 12:01 AM 1/8/2007, Brian Reid wrote:

 >Both the Apple Airport device and the Linksys router are quite capable
 >of launching and maintaining ISP connections entirely on their own.
 >They just have to be told to do it, which, alas, requires actual
 >reading of actual documentation.
 >
 >The right way to think about these devices is quite simple. The DSL or
 >cablemodem provides a connection for one computer. These devices have
 >an "inside" and an "outside". On the outside, they connct to the DSL
 >or cablemodem and pretend to be a computer; on the inside, they offer
 >connections to your computers and pretend to be your ISP. Those inside
 >connections can be either wired or wireless. The Apple device has one
 >wired connection and can do 12 wireless; the Linksys device has four wired
 >connections and can do 11 wireless.
 >
 >If it is not configured properly, it is quite possible that it needs
 >at least one computer connected on the inside.
 >
 >Despite being a Mac user and Apple bigot, I am a big fan of Linksys
 >and tell all of my friends and relatives to buy them. My current
 >favorite is the WRT54G.
 >
 >A brand new Linksys WRT54G router can be had for about US$55 pretty
 >much anywhere in North America, and it comes with the ability to
 >configure itself automatically for nearly every ISP and cable company.
 >If I were charged with solving this problem, I would value my time at
 >$60/hour, assume that it would take me more than one hour to diagnose
 >and repair the configuraton problem, and treat the thing as
 >disposable. The "setup wizard" that ships with modern Linksys routers
 >is worth its weight in
 >gold.

I'm mostly with Brian.  I have had horrible 
problems with Linksys modems but these eventually 
were resolved when I finally, as Brian said, read 
the documentation and thought about what it was 
telling me to do.  (This was telling me to power 
everything down, then power back up, starting 
with the cable modem, then with the various 
computers.  Voila!  The system did produce those 
magic numbers and all computers clicked into 
place.  We never did get our printers and 
scanners on the system, but that wasn't vital, as 
I'm awash in scanners and printers and so be it.

I also have little time for Mac.  I am forced to 
use this gear on occasion, and I still feel that 
it is the sort of goo-goo stuff suitable for very 
young children and very old people.  The rest of 
us, those who can think, are capable of using IBM 
stuff.  I am NOT saying this to start a fight and 
please do NOT rise to the bait:  we IBM users 
have to hear constant honking denunciations from 
the very young and the very old about how lousy 
OUR gear is.  We keep our peace.  Please keep 
yours.  I am mainly saying this to establish that 
I live in a certifed Mac-Free Household.  (My 
wife, who is a senior management nurse type in an 
HMO, has never even used one save for a single 
demo a decade or so back when she was a CNO of a 
small hospital.  She lives, breathes, and works 
IBM all the day long and often most of the night, 
but Mac is not in her playlist.)  Again, I am NOT 
trying to get a fight started.

After my wacky experience with Linksys (and Brian 
was involved when we first were trying to set 
this up, and his advice, to read the manual, was 
vital!), I went to my Computer Guru and told him 
that my wife wanted us to have a WIRELESS hookup 
in our new home in Chester, VA.  He immediately 
suggested a $65 D-Link wireless router.  The 
following weekend I was in Chester and set up the 
router and turned it on.  It ran fine.  Then I 
hard-wired my wife's computer (a Pentium IV) into 
it -- Tina, your "blue cable" -- and that worked 
fine.  The following week, I brought down MY 
computer with its yet-unused wireless card.  I 
set it up.  I turned it on.  My wife's computer, 
the hard-wired one, was turned off.  Mine 
immediately found the wireless modem, did a 
handshake, and we've been happily annoying the 
LUG for four months or so on a wireless 
hookup.  I now have my Pentium 2 computer here 
but I've not yet found the box in which it is 
hiding.  That one has a plug-in USB wireless 
connection, and I'm curious as to whether that 
will work when I set that one up downstairs.

A few side comments.  Laptops are all the rage 
but they are not entirely satisfactory from my 
experience as computers.  Their design requires 
compromise, and many folks simply are not 
interested in using them despite their sexy 
appeal to those addicted to high-end TV 
shows.  Some laptops have no issues with linking 
up to a net, while others seem to be a bit more 
conflicted.  And, as my wife reminds me whenever 
she is forced to use hers, "the damn keyboard is 
tiny and there's no number pad".  I escaped from 
the laptop mania more than a decade ago.  Just be 
careful about connectivity issues with some 
laptops.  Some are easy, some are harder.  Yours 
are Macs, Tina, and I suspect those have no such problems.

In summary:  your system should consist of a 
cable modem supplied by your cable company.  To 
this you connect a wireless modem, probably by a 
coax cable.  This wireless modem will permit you 
either to directly wire Ethernet-equipped 
computers into it with the appropriate cables or 
will allow computers with a wireless card to 
connect with it.  There should be no need at all 
for that hard-wired blue-cable computer to have 
any role in this.  <sigh>  The Microsoft answer 
would be:  power down in order, turning off the 
items farthest from the cable modem first.  Once 
everything is off, disconnect and deep-six the 
blue-wired laptop.  Take the blue wire out of the 
wireless router and mail the cable to a deserving party in India.

Then turn the power back on.  First, the cable 
modem.  Then the wireless router.  Then your 
outstation computers -- the ones hooked in by 
wireless.  Wireless seems to work out to 100 
meters (330 feet or so) without much problem 
though it can get dicey beyond that.  I had some 
fun the final few weeks in Roanoke when I was 
trying to slip onto someone else's cable 
connection with my Pentium 2.  I managed it a 
couple of times, but it was shaky as the 
daylights, and I never got it to support audio feeds.

I have no magic answers.  But I am sending you 
this through a wireless connection, so it CAN 
work.  And my wife's computer is off right now.

Marc


msmall@aya.yale.edu
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