Wireless Network: PC plus Apple

Factual Questions
1

I currently have a home wireless network for my cable internet access and wish to add a laptop. I am thinking the ibook but am concerned that I will not be able to access the router with a simple inserted card like with an IBM compatible. Will that work, is there another way to give both internet access from the same cable hookup, or am I SOL?

2

A quick search of the Apple site reveals their wireless network system called AirPort. Looking at their FAQ:

http://www.apple.com/airport/faq/index.html

There are two positives:

  1. It supports the IEEE 802.11b standard of wireless communication. So if your current wireless network also supports this standard of communication, you should be able to get an AirPort card for your MAC and it should work.

  2. If your current network doesn’t support IEEE 802.11b, you could get the AirPort base station and add new cards to the rest of your PC’s.

Though I don’t prefer Apple products myself, I try not to discourage others :slight_smile:

3

Thanks. The current system is a dlink which is 802.11b compliant. I favor PC’s myself. It’s a rather long story, but my son really wants the apple for his audio, video, digital photo work.

4

It’s simple enough, or as simple as the hell that is computer networking ever is. If you already have your wireless network setup, then the iBook with an Airport card is all you need. The wireless router should assign an IP number to the iBook using DHCP.

I did a quick check of the deja news threads on iBooks and dLink and apparently the one sticking point might be sharing a printer – the question is whether the dlink router in question will pass an Appletalk request. Alternatively, if your printer is not networked or is IP-addressable, this isn’t a problem.

5

I can attest to dlink working like a breeze. Get it set up first with the PC, and then install the airport card on the mac and go through the airport setup assistant. Really easy.

6

Thanks for all the advice. Amazingly, the people in the Apple store in the mall didn’t know and couldn’t find out for sure, and I wasn’t sure from the d-link info whether the two systems would work simultaneously.

Dave