wifi network

I purchased a dlink dl-524 wireless router with 4 lan ports. It took a bit of time to set it up so that our lap top could connect to our lan via wifi. There was more than a bit of effort needed to figure out how to make the wireless network secure from outsiders.

The advertisement on the box implied that it would be easy to setup - just use a wizard. The reality was that it took a bit of research and experimentation to get it right. The wizard really was oriented to connecting to an isp via broadband.

It is all too complicated!!!

Device compatibility

In the past few weeks I have bumped into live linux distributions that provide support for windows oriented hardware. Puppy Linux provides support for some winmodems (lucent types) and knoppix, using ndswrapper, enables a user to use windows wifi card drivers to support some windows wifi cards from within Linux.

The point is that the open source commpunity si begining to really address the problem of pc's with windows based hardware running a Linux OS. The community is developing not only tools for specific situations, but is also developing strategies for the development of such tools.