wireless and wired together?

[KarateLois]

I have three computers on a wired network in my house. I want to buy a wireless laptop. Can I have both wired and wireless running in my home at the same time if I am using cable as my source? How about DSL? How do I do it? Thanks

 

[jimbopalmer]

The most pleasent way will be to buy a 4 port wireless router, and use it in place of your current router.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[ImpetusEra]

I added access points to my existing wired network. It may make more sense for you to just buy a wireless 4-port router as suggested.

 

[bcastner]

For mysterious reasons Access Points are more expensive than wireless routers.

So, buy the wireless router and use it as an Access Point. This would be my preferred solution, particularly as if you purchase a wireless router from Linksys from the WRT54G family there is an incredible wealth of third-party firmware offering everything from WPA-2 to WDS (wireless repeating).

The configuration is simple. Setup the SSID, channel, WEP or other security for wireless router as you desire. Give the router a not-in-use-elsewhere static IP address in the non-DHCP scope of router #1 -- (say, 192.168.1.2) Now disable the DHCP server on the wireless router. Connect the wireless router to your existing router using regular LAN ports (not the WAN port) on both ends.

Done. See:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/network/20030716/index.html.

 

[bcastner]

I forgot an important step:

For router #2 give it an internal IP in the non-DHCP scope of router #1.

For example, if router #1 uses as its DHCP scope 50 addresses from 192.168.1.100 -- 192.168.1.149 pick a non-conflicting static IP below x.x.x.100 or above x.x.x.149 for the device.

As another secondary thought, most WRT54G series routers do MDX automaticly, but I would use a cross-over cable between LAN port on router #1 to LAN port on router #2 just to be safe.

Best wishes,
Bill Castner