I've been thinking about changing my home network to a Wireless one for some weeks.
I have a very noisy Pentium4 as my main server and the room where it lives is going to be used for other purposes in some months, so I have to move the machine or get rid of it (in fact, one of the main reasons, errr, well, excuses, I had to buy my PowerBook was being able to get rid of this machine and reduce the space used by my hardware).
My plan is to replace the server with my old laptop, a Celeron 400 Mhz (is a lot quieter and I don't plan to use it on the road again), and use the PowerBook as my main machine (In fact I already do it, the monitor I have attached to my Pentium4 died almost at the same time I bought the Mac and I don't want to buy another one).
So yesterday I looked at the ValenciaWireless website to see which hardware they recommend. I wanted one wireless card for the PowerBook (I have a PCMCIA Orinoco 802.11b card at home, but it is not mine) and a wireless router to be able to put my machines anywhere on the house without having to be near a telephone jack to connect to the ADSL line.
As I already have an ADSL router I decided I prefer an Ethernet router, this way I need to use two routers but it is more flexible (and the Ethernet router is cheaper than the ADSL one, by the way). I looked at some webs and I decided I wanted the Linksys WRT54G router. I decided I wanted this one because it uses Linux (something I'm familiar with) and I've read I'll be able to install additional software on it.
For the PCMCIA card I wanted support for the 802.11g standard. I ended up printing the list of prism54 cards and took it with me to the Mediamarkt that is closer to my house to see if they had the hardware I wanted.
Luckily they had the WRT54G and the first PCMCIA card of the list, the Netgear WG511, so I bought both things and now have all my hardware ready.
Yesterday I tested everything (putting the router behind my current server) and it worked great (it's a pity that the Netgear uses evil firmware, I noticed it once I tested the card, but it works and I'm not going to change the card now).
