Easy wireless home networking (General Comments on Networking)

Member Name: averagepunter

Product:	General Comments on Networking
Date:	15/10/02 (271 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compact, Reasonable price

Disadvantages: Poor instructions

I do not consider myself to be particularly skilled in the art of computing - I switch it on, use the applications and pray that nothing malfunctions. I had never imagined that I would have my own home network...albeit only two PC's.

Due to some recent conflict over PC usage for internet access, I started to look at the options for getting the PC upstairs hooked up as well. After a little research, the idea of a wireless home network appealed to me - after all, nobody wants to run wires all round the house. I purchased a twin pack of ACTIONTEC USB WIRELESS ADAPTERS from Jungle.com. They arrived the next day - great service.

These are very small (4" x 2") so great if you don't have much space. You connect them to a spare USB port on each PC and then set-up the drivers from the CD supplied. You get the option to specify which files and printers you wish to share, and also whether you wish to share an internet connection. In theory, this would give you a set-up time of about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately, the instructions supplied with these adapters are sadly inadequate - at least for my level of knowledge. A quick 5 minute phone call to Actiontec support and my home network was up and running. I had no way of knowing what the 'fix' was, and this could easily have been remedied by Actiontec if they had included a half reasonable set of instructions with the pack. That would have given this a 5 star rating.

BUT....that was a minor inconvenience. I am staggered by how easy this was to set up and how well it works. We can use the internet from both computers simultaneously with no noticeable performance degradation using a shared DSL connection. I have some minor issues to resolve with a firewall conflict but that is not the fault of the adapters. A great product for home use.


(BTW...if anyone knows how to 'add a new item' - please let me know in comments. I am still baffled by this new DOOY
OO)

Summary: