Don said:
The basement PC (OS = Win98) connects via Wireless
to Internet (no cable along this rural road) via a Trendnet
TRW-432BRP (wireless) router that I added as a hardware
firewall. This system runs as well as the (cell phone tower)
signal allows.
We now have an upstairs PC (OS=WinXP). The wireless
(antenna) modem does not get a good signal upstairs
(a surprise, and we do not know why.) Can I network these
two home PCs simply by installing a $30 wireless card in
the upstairs PC and linking it to the wireless router downstairs?
If successful, will this give the upstairs PC ethernet access
to the Internet?
If I understand you correctly, your Internet connection is a wireless
broadband cell phone-type connection. Whatever device you have
("antenna/modem") that connects to the cell tower then connects
(presumably via an Ethernet cable) to the Trendnet router.
Unless your upstairs location is on the opposite side of the house from
the cell tower, I agree that it's peculiar that the antenna/modem there
can't pick up the cell signal as well as, if not better than, the
antenna/modem in the basement. One thing you might want to try is to
temporarily move the basement antenna/modem upstairs -- just to check
that the upstairs antenna/modem is not the problem.
Otherwise, the answer to your questions is, unfortunately, "maybe." It
depends on the construction of your house and exactly what is in the
line of sight between your upstairs computer and the basement wifi
router. Assuming that you made a typo, and what you have is a
TEW-432BRP, Trendnet says: "Range for Indoor of 30 ~ 50 meters (depends
on the environment)." If you have a normal wood-frame house that does
not have aluminum-foil-backed insulation in the walls, it probably will
work.
The only way to know is to try. You might consider getting either a
wireless adapter that connects with a USB cable (as opposed to a USB
"thumb-drive" type wireless adapter) or a wireless adapter with a
detachable antenna and extension cable so that you can move the antenna
around and optimize signal strength. (If, for example, your upstairs
computer is a tower and you bought the Trendnet TEW-423PI PCI card, the
antenna would be at the bottom of the back of tower, which might not be
the best place to pick up the signal from the basement router. That
antenna IS detachable, however, and Trendnet sells both extension
antenna cables and better antennas ... but now you're getting
considerably over $30).
If you can get a good signal from the router, this will indeed give the
upstairs computer Internet access. If you like, you also can implement
file and printer sharing between the two computers.
Once you establish that you can get a connection to the router, you
should implement the router's wireless security encryption feature,
preferably using WPA2-PSK (AES).
--
Lem -- MS-MVP - Networking
To the moon and back with 4KB of RAM and 72KB of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm