Wireless & Wired Networks

[Crossbow]

Hi There,

I work for a company with only 8 PCs, which have been networked, all
on XP Professional, with an ADSL connection.

I'm no networking guy, I've just been given the job as I'm the only
one now in the firm with some idea about computers.

All the PCs are moving to another floor, so they want to move to a
wireless LAN, rather than lay all new cables. I got a Netgear
Wireless Access Point and some Belkin wireless network cards, and
started by fitting two, to try things out.

The problem I have is that now, two of the pcs on the wired LAN and
one of the pcs on the wireless keep dropping off the network and only
a reboot will do to reconnect.

I running a little program called LookAtLan, which shows that all the
IP addresses run nicely in sequence, no conflicts, and we can ping
them all without a problem

TIA for any assistance.

Andy

 

[Nick Thomas]

I'd be a little skeptical of the range specified on the WAP - I added one to
a small wireless network to (try to) get a bit more range out of the network
and found that it didn't increase the range by much (if anything). I also
found that using a Belkin Wireless Router (instead of the wireless access
point) things worked much better (used in conjuction with Belkin wireless
cards in a couple of laptops). The laptops very occassionally drop out, but
I'm pretty sure this is atmospheric where I am - stopping and restarting the
Belkin Wireless Network Configuration Utility seems to solve this problem.
I don't know if it's included with wireless cards for pcs tho.

You need to be careful that the WAP can handle 8 pcs as well (although I
realise you haven't got them all attached as yet)

I don't think this answers your question but might be some food for
thought...