Wireless Networking and Dial up

You need a wireless router and a wireless network card, either internal MiniPCI card or PC slot card, for your notebook. I have no idea what you media center is or if it can go wireless. So that is something you're going to have to figure out. If it can go wireless then you will need to wire it to the wireless router. You connect your desktop PC to on of the LAN ports on the router, this is done with a Ethernet cable, and enable "Internet connection sharing" on the desktop. You need either 98SE, ME, W2K or XP to do it.

Really it would take me way to much typing to explain all of it but it's not that hard. Do a search for home networking or internet connection sharing or wireless networking and you will get many many hit for sites that will walk you through it.

Thanks Ed for repling. I'll try searching for internet connection sharing, and see what I can come up with. I know it cant be that hard to do. I'm just new to the computer word, and there are so many products out there. Thanks agian.

I stand corrected on routers not supporting dialup.  My option might be cheaper and might have a better chance of working with bad ISPs (read aol), that said, the router will probably let you share even if the desktop is off, which might be nice.  It would also offer better performance and might be the only option if your desktop is too old to support a wireless technology.

Icebag5,

There are few wireless routers that will support dial-up. SMC makes one that does, the SMC7004AWBR. You'll need to use an external modem with it, though.

Jim

First of all, I don't really recommend wireless net access for dialup given its slow speed -- do not have multiple computers accessing the same 56k connection and expect good results.  This said, the very fact that you will not have many machines on your network will allow a cheap, ad-hoc wireless network to meet your needs (ad-hoc basically meaning that you will not be purchasing a router or access point). 

Despite the previous post, I do not think a router is a good option for you.  A) you will still have to dial in from a computer as no routers I know of support dial-up WAN connections.  B) Given your networks size, any operating system windows98SE and up can act as a software router.

To get up and running there are two things you must do.  The first is to create a local area home network between the three machines.  Each laptop will obviously need a wireless card.  As for the desktop, you could buy an actual access point for the desktop and hook it into an ethernet card, but that *might* complicate the setup.  Simply buying a wireless card or adapter for the desktop and linking the three machines via an ad-hoc network is easier and cheaper -- and should work fine for you.

Once you successfully get the home network up and are able to share files, it's time to move to the next step.  I'm assuming that the desktop will be used to dial in to your ISP.  If you don't wish to purchase third party software, this machine needs to be running an operating system which allows internet connection sharing (ICS) -- anything above windows98SE *should* have this ability.

To enable ICS, right click on the dialup connection's icon and click properties (these instructions are for XP and may vary somewhat).  Click the advanced tab and turn on ICS.  Click the adapter you're using to connect to the laptops as the home network connection.  It should work from there but they're are plenty of websites that offer advice on ICS (I personally have never used it).

You should now have wireless internet access for your home.

***Note, if your ISP has its own client (read aol among others) I'm not sure if you can use ICS.  For aol, which I've had before, you might try enabling ICS on the "aol adapter" under network connections, much as I described for the dial-up icon above.  For other clients, just play around with it.

~~~dan

So I had an idea while writing my last post.  What if you could put something in a phonejack that would wirelessly talk to a modem.  Basically you could have wireless access without the lan and without any ISP compatability problems.  So just as a general rule, if I think of something cool, someone else already has.  In two minutes on google, I found this, which isn't exactly what you want but it's very close.  http://www.connectronics.com/aerocomm/

Now granted, that particular example is pricey enough to kill the idea, but that's not saying you won't find something along these lines for less elsewhere.  Anyone heard of something like this before or want to look?

Nem, I have 2 Modems on my desk top. A HSP56 Micromodem and a Lucent Win Modem. I also have 2 Network adapters. A 1394 Net adapter and a Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC. I have Windows XP on all 3 computers.

If I buy a wireless adapter for my desk top that should get my laptops on line, but will I be able to print from them or do I need to do something different. I'm not super concerned about getting on line with two computers at the same time, although it would be nice. My main concern is to be wireless through out my home.

Tim 

Yes, right click the installed printer and enabled print sharing.  It's a bit more complicated on XP pro if simple file sharing is disabled, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.    The only negative to doing it my way (and not buying a router/hub with a print server) is that the computer to which the printer is attached will need to be on in order to print from other machines.  That said, it would probably be on anyway if you're using it to dial out.

Thanks for the help everyone. I think I've got it now. Tim