[IAEP] "Grannie" Needs Help!

[Kevin Cole]

Hi Caryl,

The school won't need another computer.  A Wireless Access Point (WAP)
is a fairly common solution. Two well-known brands (Linksys and
Netgear) can be found at many computer and/or electronics stores.
Best Buy leaps to mind. Two randomly selected images for reference:

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WAP54G
http://www.netgear.com/Products/APsWirelessControllers/AccessPoints/WG602.aspx

I don't know how they compare, price and performance wise with others.
 I only know that the brands are well advertised.  At home, I ended up
with some cheap no-name, no-manual, obviously-assembled-outside-the-US
WAP that's been working okay for a few years now.

The gist is that you plug one of these babies into the wire, as you
would a regular computer.  It then broadcasts and receives network
traffic from multiple wireless computers, routing it to the wire.  It
also (if configured to do so) accepts requests for identifying the
laptops to the network, and assigns IP addresses to each laptop making
the request (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, a.k.a. DHCP).  Not
too hard to configure, in my limited experience.

Or, get a bunch of USB to ethernet dongles and wire each laptop that
way.  (Seems like a messy way to go with wee ones, IMHO.  Lots of
wires to trip over and pull out of laptops.  Then again, so's a power
cord...)
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Washington, DC
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