home networking....

heya, I want to network my home with several computers wirelessly and have broadband to which they can all access
there are potentially 6 computers available though only 5 will be on at any one time (as there are only 5 in the house!):
4 desktops (one is an old one just re-fitted)
1 laptop
1 ibook (mac)

all pc's run Xp, the ibook runs OS X and has all the wireless gubbins inside it apparently.
its not a very big house so it would be nice to go wireless, how is it for reliability? any one make better than others? anything I should be aware of before I go a head with it all??
(I can get bb in my area - london :) )
so, any suggestions gratefully recieved :)

Get some cable conduit. Get out the power drill, hammer and tacks and sort out some proper cat 5 wiring around the house. If its within my pathetic DIY skills reach, then anyone can do it :)

= lots cheaper.
= lots faster.
= going to last alot longer (cat 5e cable more or less ok for gigabit in future).

Edit: Ah dam, I didnt notice that you had a 2nd mac laptop. I was going so suggest you do this to save yourself having to buy a wireless base station... but I dont know if macs can handle it or not? :(

I'd recommend both - it's what I have! Hardwired for all the PC's and wireless for the Laptop. You'll have to spend some time locking down your wireless access as you don't want to be sharing your bandwidth with half of london.

If your going NTL/Bluyonder BB, then I'd recommend one of these . Damn fine and very secure.

yeah, that was a worry I had, if we go wireless how many of our neighbours will be joining in?!!
I did a brief wireless 'play' the other day and managed to connect to someone in the area, must have been reasonably close as the connection speed was as high as you can get (or doesn't this change very much regardless of distance?) - anyway, yeah I was wondering how to stop our wireless network beocme 'free access' to the rest of the city... short of building it underground !

This will be really easy to do and to do in a secure fashion. Just because you have 802.11x does not mean you have to share. Connecting with wires is fine but the price for wireless products (in the US at least) is falling so fast it doesn't make sense to use wires. Can you get a Linksys BEFW11S4 in the UK? It is a wireless access point with a broadband router built in. It has NAT (sort of a firewall) and WEP (encryption to protect your wireless connection). Add a few adapters and your done. The setup on this router is really easy.

I'm currently connecting 3 desktops and 3 laptops via a Linksys 11g wireless router to NTL cable and it's a dream.

The documentation that came with the router and cards was excellent. Very clear, made setting up the network and security very simple. As long as you change the name of the network and enable WEP encryption then your network should be reasonably secure. It won't be 100% uncrackable but it will certainly stop the casual attacker from breaking in.

Wired networks are a bit more secure but I don't think the cheaper and faster arguements really hold up anymore.

A wireless network card costs about £30 where as a wired one is probably £10. Once you add in the cost for the network cable and all the other rubbish then you're probably up around the £30-mark anyway. It's also a lot more hassle, especially if you ever move your computers.

Wireless networks now run at 54Mbps, compared to 100Mbps for most wired networks. Unless you intend to transfer a lot of data on a regular basis then you probably won't notice the difference.

Just my 2p. ;)