Chapter 12. Buying a Wi-Fi Access Point or Router

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding network hardware

• Wireless networking kits

• Choosing a Wi-Fi access point

• Combo wire lineWi-Fi routers

Perhaps you've used your laptop with Intel Centrino mobile technology on the road and have seen how great wireless and Wi-Fi are. It's also okay if you haven't. (Maybe you don't like to travel.) In any case, you are ready to "unwire" your home or small office by adding a wireless Wi-Fi network you can use with your Centrino laptop and other devices that have been enabled for Wi-Fi.

You'll find that it's very easy to create a Wi-Fi network from scratch (or to add Wi-Fi to an existing Ethernet network).

This chapter gets you started building your own Wi-Fi network. There are quite a number of different pieces of hardware (or hardware combinations) you can use to do this, which can seem a bit overwhelming. But, fear not! It's all a lot simpler than it might seem.

I'll start out by clearly delineating the different kinds of hardware that you might use in creating a home or small office Wi-Fi network. There's no need for any confusion about this. Then, I'll take a look at all-in-one Wi-Fi networking kits.

Finally, I'll show you some of the most popular access points: the Apple Extreme and AirPort Express base stations and combo wire lineWi-Fi routers from D-Link and Linksys.