Netgear is my personal choice. Love their stuff. Way easy to setup. Here's the link to their home products, http://www.netgear.com/products/wireless/80211b.asp?view=hm. I've got the access point and pc card at my house and installed the wireless router and usb adapters at my parents place. I get excellent coverage everywhere at home including out on the deck. Hope that helps. 8)

Not necessarily a strong recommendation, but a personal opinion backed with experience....

I use a $200 Linksys wireless router / cable modem. Cards cost $100 apiece. I've never had any problems with it, once I got it to work (more on that in a minute.) Flash ROM firmware, regular upgrades, simple browser-based admin console.

I've only used it with Windows boxes, but I believe they support Linux & Mac also.

I had one problem upon installing the card. The default configuration used - I believe... I'm writing this from work - an 'automatic' form of authentication. I perused a forum and found out that Windows machines, where you run the Linksys install and not the Windows install, need to have this set to a specific setting. (Damn, now my age IS showing... I forgot which setting it was. Hey, it happened 15 months ago!)

Anyways, that brings me to my second recommendation. DSL Reports. They have fairly active forums, good reviews, and a Linksys technician actively participates also. I found out my problem in 10 minutes of browsing in this site.

Good luck!

I've had nothing but wasted trouble with Linksys, but only with their ethernet stuff not their wireless stuff. Only wireless I've ever made use of is the Airport stuff, but the range isn't quite what other wireless equipment manages to achieve.

My wired Netgear router is the shiznit. After two weeks fighting with my wired Linksys router, the Netgear was up and running in five minutes.

Of course, I have no idea how this does or does not translate over into wireless products. For me, the Linksys issue became: Any company that has to strike exclusivity deals with retailers, barring them from offering any products other than theirs, must have a reason (read: shitty product) for doing so. And that's Linksys.

My WAP's a Linksys, and I had a Linksys PCMCIA card in my old laptop, but I assume that the Linksys and Netgear cards are both Orinoco chipsets. My new laptop has 802.11 built in (yay big antennas alongside the screen!).

The latest incarnations of the various wireless access points have a NAT router built in; this would be a detriment for me as the wireless gateway in the garage, where the NAT router is, doesn't get a solid signal to the other side of the house, performance is slow enough that with that span I'd have trouble using remoted X apps. Luckily I've got enough application for wired ethernet throughout the house that I just dropped the access point in the middle of the house and get fine coverage everywhere.

The only downside of my WAP box is that it requires a Windows box to configure it as it doesn't have much of its own notion of TCP/IP address and I haven't bothered to try to puzzle out SNMP enough to configure it that way. Presumably something with a NAT router built in could just use a web browser to configure it.

My overall experience with wireless has been that it mostly just works. This is even more amazing when I bring my Linux laptop into a Starbucks and the T-Mobile link comes up without trouble; us Linux folks are used to having to at least dig through an obscure config file and download a funky driver to interoperate with Microsoft biased networks.

Hey Bb,
I just set up my wireless network yesterday. I have a Linksys 4 port router (wired) and a Belkin WAP. My setup includes the "wired" router, since I originally had a wired network, until yesterday. The nice thing about the WAP is that it gets it's IP from the router and is ready to rock. It works great with my iBook. One small problem with Belkin is that there is no browser access to configure the router (as is the case with the Linksys), so one must use Belkins config software, which runs only on Windows. I think a wireless router would more than take care of your needs, but it may be worth looking into a wired router and a WAP, as the price may come out lower. I saw my Belkin WAP at one of the office stores on sale for $70. Not a bad deal. Anyway, I'm by no means a networking expert, so if anyone notices any errors in my recommendation, please hollar.

I forgot to include (not sure that it matters much) that I have a cable modem feeding the whole thing. Good luck, Bb.

Buy this router and plug it into your cable modem: http://www.linksys.com/Products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=415

The router will act as a single Internet client to the outside world and will provide DHCP and NAT services to your network.

Buy a wireless PCMCIA card for each of your laptops: http://www.linksys.com/Products/product.asp?grid=22&prid=427

Upgrade the router's firmware: ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pub/network/befw11s4v1-fw-1427.zip (must run from Windows, IIRC)

The PC cards will work under any modern Linux system (install pcmcia-cs package if necessary).

The PC cards will work under any version of Windows (comes with installer CD for drivers, then go to Settings/Control Panel/Network/Local Area Network connection/Properties/Configure Instant Wireless Card/Advanced and set Network Type to "Infrastructure").

The router will work with the Powerbook's Airport card without modification, IIRC.

There are also regular Ethernet ports on the back of the router if you have any non-wireless desktops that need to share the Internet connection.

Thanks very very much for suggestions and advice. Linksys and Netgear seem to have sewed up the industry between them, except for Ryan's Belkin WAP.

I kind of wish now that I had done this sooner. Ah, well -- better late than never.Time to go look at specs, compare prices, coax purchase out of worn out CC.

Thanks again, much.

(b!x, shiznit? That's a great sounding word.)

I set up a linksys network on wintel platforms several months ago. The only drawback i ran into was that it wasn't obvious how to get the MS peer to peer networking running at the same time as I had WAN connectivity from all the PCs. Since the WAN connectivity was what I was aiming for I just skipped the other part, but I sure am interested in how the LAN and the WAN can function together.