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March 20, 2004
Joining the Wi-Fi Universe
Yesterday at lunchtime I ran down the street to the local Best Buy and picked up a wireless router for my apartment. I'd just gotten a new Mac G4 12" laptop for work and wanted to be able to use it at home, but our other Mac was already teathered to our broadband Internet modem. So setting up a wireless network made a lot a sense - that way, I could jump online with the laptop without unplugging my desktop Mac from the Net and plugging the ethernet cable into my laptop. Even better, a wireless network would let Susanne and me both work from home at the same time without jousting over who'd be online at any given time.
So now I've got a Netgear wireless router running in our sunroom/home office, allowing me to walk around the apartment with the laptop and type this very blog. (Right now I'm sitting at the table in our breakfast nook with our cat Dizzy sniffing the LCD screen.) The wireless connection is working well, but I'm having some issues setting up the amount of security I'd like to have. The tech support folks at Netgear were rather evasive, basically saying they weren't sure about how to set up all of the various security features on the Mac unless I kept it plugged into the router -- and what's the point of that if you're trying to be wireless?
So, I've got a few weeks of trial time to figure out whether I can add a stronger wireless firewall to my new network; otherwise I'll just have to send it back to Best Buy, bite the bullet, and buy the Apple-branded wi-fi system, AirPort, which costs nearly three times as much as the Netgear unit.... -ac
Posted by acarvin at March 20, 2004 9:32 AM
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