Cable Modem

[MikePA]

<font color=blue>The latest trend is Linksys Wireless Routers that can attach to laptops or desktop CPUs within your house - they run about $180.</font color=blue>

I thought about wireless, but the price as well as slower speed steered me to running Cat 5 patch cables from my 10/100 switch to the rooms that needed a connection. While I did the kid's room and den 'professionally', my living room (laptop) connection wasn't all that elegant /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif. I just ran the cable across the basement, drilled a small hole at the baseboard behind the sofa ran the patch cable up through the hole and coiled it under the sofa. If I want to connect to the Internet, or work, I just reach under the sofa, plug in and boot up. Since we use DHCP at work and I use it at home, I don't have to mess with network settings either. Of course, my kids get a little upset when I connect to work, since the VPN connection knocks them off the Internet /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif.

 

[gws]

The linksys wireless access point is nice. As for slower than 10/100 cat5, yes the wireless is, but who cares your link to the world is still the cable modem and its slower than the 10mb lan anyway. You will be hard pressed to see a real world difference between the wireless and a direct connect through the same cable modem. For all but bulk downloads to high bandwidth sites your times will be the same.

 

[MikePA]

You're 100% correct about the slowest speed being the Internet connection, but I also do backups across my local network to the desktop with the 120 gig external Firewire drive so every megabit counts /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

 

[GlueGuy]

I would worry about security of a wireless connection. Only a matter of time before some enterprising hacker figures out how to piggy-back on top of somebody's internet connection. Also, I would worry about people snooping. Wires are much harder to tap into casually.