Wireless Planning AD-HOC or Infrastructure?

[Rock2447]

I'm planning on having a couple of Wired devices connected to my Home Network (File Server and Primary PC with Dial-up) I also was planning on making my 2 laptops wireless so I can go to my garage with them (40 to 60 feet from House). I've been reading up and I need to do this in the most cost effective manner possible. If I can get away with not buying an access point I'm going to try.

 

[bcastner]

You are going to have to have a bridge between the wired and wireless segments somehow.

You could add a wireless adapter to your primary desktop and then use ad hoc. You need to be using Windows XP on that desktop, and let it enable a "Wireless Bridge" connection between the wired and wireless network segments.

I should warn you that the antennas, and hence the range, of PCMCIA adapters is nowhere close to the range of other forms of wireless adapters such as USB with their larger and more flexible antennas.

But 40' to 60' feet should be doable.

 

[PeterHurst]

You can do without an AP and run in ad-hoc mode. I've had a problem with a cheap NIC card in the main PC slowing the PC down considerably if there were no ad-hoc clients available - it kept saying it was connected then not connected then connected again. I assume this hunting was slowing everything else.

It still works ok if I only enable the card when I want to use it.