Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Friday

Can a wireless network span floors in a house?

My family just recently installed DSL Broadband, we live in a 2 story house and we have 1 computer downstairs and 1 upstairs. The internet connection is connected the the downstairs computer and I was wondering how to get the broadband to go upstairs as well as downstairs. We're considering a wireless network but I am unsure if the connection will work on two computers at the same time?

A wireless base station is unquestionably your best solution in this situation. We have a split-level house that has four different floors, and our cable modem connection comes into the basement where it's connected to a broadband router, which is then hooked up to an 802.11b wireless base station. With that in place, we can connect wirelessly anywhere in the house and yard.

Even better, it offers lots of protection for your computers and home network too, because the router is what has the external-visible internet (IP) address assigned by the DSL or cable company, while your individual computers are given different addresses through the magic of what network types call Network Address Translation.

Modern wireless base stations also serve as...