my office is about to go all but full-time virtual, which is a smashingly great idea, considering how much i hate driving in indiana winter weather.
that said, i don’t have the first clue about how to get set up at home. assume i know nothing about this - because i don’t. i have a hp probook 6545b that is about six months old and have never had wireless in my condo before. fwiw, i’m quite sure my neighbors have their own networks. and that, fellow dopers, is the sum total of my knowledge about all things wireless connection.
i need background info on this before i tackle our IT department, which has a rep for being less than helpful to those of us who don’t speak the language, and i haven’t found anything really useful in the doper archives.
Why do you need wireless at all? You can surely just plug your laptop into your network. (I am assuming you have some kind of Internet service at home.)
You’re not going to like this but I strongly suggest you speak to your IT dept, because they may well have standard package, both hardware and software. Further, depending on the nature of your work, they may forbid you from using wireless at all, specify a dedicated - corporate-funded - connection, or require that they install it. If they respond with an email of techie gobbledegook, just post it here and we’ll decipher it for you.
While the above is true, the simple answer to your question is easy: buy a wireless router. If you don’t have Internet, get that, too. You’ll be given a nice set of instructions to get the Internet itself up. And there should be easy to follow instructions on how to get your wireless router working in the box.
But, like they said, make sure you don’t have to do anything special for your job, first. I will suggest that you only buy from the company if they say you have to, or it’s actually a better deal.
a wireless router out of the box will not have the security and setup you might want. it would take some change of settings (which your IT people could tell you) for you to make.
using a wired router would have fewer, easier changes required. it would take some change of settings (which your IT people could tell you) for you to make. if it was also a wireless router you would want to disable the wireless function.
if you want to operate from a single location then wired gives better performance.