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February 17, 2008
Installing Wi Fi
Has anyone had experience with putting Wi Fi in their home. We have a three story single family. The cost and hassle of retrofitting to run cable everywhere is too daunting. Any recommended installers?
Comments
You should be able to do it yourselves - wifi is generally designed as a consumer product. A couple of questions:
1) What kind of internet access do you currently have? DSL? Cable?
2) How many computers are you talking about? What kinds? (desktops? laptops)
3) Do you have any other devices that need internet access? (e.g. Tivo, Internet phone, etc?)
4) If you're not comfortable with setting up internet access on your own computer, did someone else do it for you?
Wifi in a multi-story building can work, but you need to be careful about antenna placement - the signal won't always travel through walls well. In my 3-story building, we put the wifi on the second story, and we get a decent signal everywhere in the house.
Any recent laptop will ship with wifi. If you have desktop machines, or other non-portable devices, you can buy wifi antennas for them, at reasonable cost ($30-50).
I'd check with a neighborhood PC shop (anyone know any?), or your desktop-support person at your office? Or a friend who has a computer-savvy teenager? Setting up wifi is pretty run-of-the-mill these days.
Posted by: swngnmonk at February 17, 2008 1:40 PM
We have a four story brownstone in Park Slope, and live on the top three floors. We ran into some trouble - but ended up with a successful wireless connection throughout. Our main line via Road Runner cable is hooked directly to our main computer on the third floor. By placing small "boosters" into sockets, in addition to attenna, we are now able to get sireless signals to the second and top floors.
Posted by: guest at February 17, 2008 1:47 PM
We live in a 2-story with E-basement one-family house, and my husband in his basement office gets his wireless signal from the 2nd floor modem connected to my desktop. We have Verizon.
Posted by: guest at February 17, 2008 2:25 PM
"Setting up wifi is pretty run-of-the-mill these days"
This is so right on.
I would recommend buying a standard Linksys from Best Buy.
They have tech support AND more importantly, if you get stuck, you can call our Internet Service Provider and they could probably help, as that's all they deal with.
Posted by: guest at February 17, 2008 5:35 PM
OP here. Thanks for the helpful responses. Any idea what equipment costs? Right now we have 1 computer, a 2004 Imac G4. We're connected to the internet via Time Warner Cable cable on the third floor (which is the top floor for us). We have two kids and have gotten along sharing the one computer so far. My oldest starts high school next year though and my youngest will be in middle school. I expect the older girl will need to spend more time online and that we'll need to get her a notebook. Over time, I expect my younger daughter will need a notebook too. Would like them to be able to work throughout the house (i.e. downstairs at the dining room table) or up in their rooms. Appreciate all the good advice.
Posted by: Boerum Hill at February 17, 2008 5:43 PM
I have a 3 story brownstone as well and have Macintosh computers as well as Time Warner's Roadrunner. If you are using an Imac I would recommend buying an Airport setup. Either an Airport Express Base Station (w/Airtunes $99) or AirPort Extreme Base Station with Gigabit Ethernet for $179. I personally have both. I use the Extreme Base Station to connect to the TWC cable modem and then have wireless cards in the computers that connect to that. The Airport Extreme is set up as a remote base station that connects to the main one connected to the cable modem. You can also play music from that Base Station as well but that is a whole other conversation. The Airports are easy to configure especially if you have a Apple Macintosh. I have also previously used Linksys wireless routers as well and they are great but may be a little more difficult to install if you are a novice to WiFi and using the MAC OS. Let me know if you need anymore info.
Posted by: Juno106 at February 17, 2008 7:38 PM
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