Why is Wireless networking such a difficult concept?

[Battyone]

Heh, when I was working over at Radio$hack, I had quite a few idiots with wireless and even networking in general

Some favorite quickies:

SC - This router does not say it is Macintosh compatible.

SC - So if I install the wireless card in my computer, it will get wireless internet?
Me - Do you have a broadband provider?
SC - If I need that, then why am I buying ALL of this STUFF. [Just buying the router]

SC - If I am on the 3rd floor of my house and the router is in the basment, will the signal reach?
Me - (thinking) Gee, I dont know, let me go to my spy archive that I have on you, determine your phone system [2.4ghz phones are popular], then your house's layout and structural materials....etc [said] Yes! (Hey, I worked on comission)

And then there were the miracle workers:

SC - My buddy 3 houses down has a wireless network, if I get a wireless card and a extended range antennea will I be able to use his network? [BTW -- In Ithaca 3 houses down can mean down the block, or over 50 acres away...]

By 3 months into working there, the only people I sold wireless routers to were the IT/IS staff of Ithaca College and Cornell University...

[XM10ADefiant]

I love how people come up to me all excited about wireless and wanting to get hooked up and I ask the all important question....................How do you connect to the internet?

Answer: ummm AOL.....................................

followed by 10 min of explaining why they cant have wireless on dial up and that their friend DID NOT get a wireless network on his AOL account despite what he told you.

[trunks2k]

followed by 10 min of explaining why they cant have wireless on dial up and that their friend DID NOT get a wireless network on his AOL account despite what he told you.

Well, you probably should be able set up a wireless connection off of dialup if you really wanted to. It would just run slow as hell, and would be rather pointless. Just buy a dial-up router (most stores don't sell them, but you can get one here) then hook that router to a wireless one. In fact after another google search, I found a wireless dialup router here.

Also, AOL does/did work with broadband, but I think you had to get the actual internet service through a different party. But with how popular AOL was in the 90s a lot of people that still use AOL (even if they have broadband) think that's how they connect to the internet.

[gbm85]

I thought it would fail because it was(and still is) unsecure and was relativly easy to break into.

WEP is relatively easy to break. If you know what you're doing, you can crack a WEP key in a matter of hours. However, WPA and the subsequent WPA2 are not as easy. Yes, WPA is subject to offline attack, but if you use the full 63 characters and use a random password that consists of all available characters, then cracking it would take too long to make it worth doing.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I get a lot of idiots who don't understand that wireless won't work if you have something BLOCKING the signal. I also had a woman recently ask if she could get wireless in her house & then use it in the woods w/ her laptop. She threw a FIT & requested a supervisor. The sup told her the same thing. You can't go out much further than 150 ft. from the signal. DUH.

Oh, so that's why my signal can't reach from Greensboro to Reidsville. I thought that 150 feet was in miles.

*ducks flying objects*

[HawaiianShirts]

SC - This router does not say it is Macintosh compatible.

Had that argument with a woman just the other day. She INSISTED that every wireless router was Mac compatible and that I didn't know what I was talking about. I tried to be friendly about it and used stuff like, "Well, only these two are listed as Mac compatible, but if you can get the others to work, all the more power to you. No one I know can do it."

Despite my insistence that I had heard of no one configuring a non-Mac compatible router to work with a Mac (I believed it was possible but extremely difficult), she took one. She brought it back the next day and took another. She brought that back two days later and took a third. She brought the third back another week later, saying that she got it to work once but only for a few minutes.

She complained that I must sell crap for routers because none of them worked with her Mac. That fourth time, though, I showed her the two that were listed as Mac compatible. She examined one, pleasantly said "Oh, yes, that'll work," and took it. Haven't seen her since.

[RichS]

Well, you probably should be able set up a wireless connection off of dialup if you really wanted to.

Yes, you can, because that's how I have mine set up. No cable or DSL available where I'm at. They're saying wireless available this or next month, I hope...

External serial port modem, to SMC Barricade Internet Sharing wired router, to D-Link wireless G router with WPA encryption enabled.

Slow, yes, but at least I can keep my kids' machine and the guide on my Media Center PC updated.

[LostMyMind]

Despite my insistence that I had heard of no one configuring a non-Mac compatible router to work with a Mac (I believed it was possible but extremely difficult), she took one.

What kind of routers you got selling over there? Routers are suppose to not care what the "device" is. Every router I've dealt with (and I've dealt with many different brands), all had "html" accessed configuration. If you're talking about gateway or switches then I can understand.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Yes, you can, because that's how I have mine set up. No cable or DSL available where I'm at. They're saying wireless available this or next month, I hope...

External serial port modem, to SMC Barricade Internet Sharing wired router, to D-Link wireless G router with WPA encryption enabled.

Slow, yes, but at least I can keep my kids' machine and the guide on my Media Center PC updated.

Just out of curiosity, how would I be able to set that up w/my laptop? I have built-in wireless and a dial up ISP account (b/f lives in the country and there's no DSL or cable either.)

[LostMyMind]

If you got dial up ISP, you just need to find a router that will access the modem to do a ISP dial-up. Then connect a wireless modem to that router (this second step is usually because dial-up modem routers generally aren't mixed with wireless ones).

Since RichS actually said the router he used for the dial up connection "SMC Barricade Internet Sharing". Once you have that set up and connecting correctly to the internet. Then you connect a cable from that router to the "in" plug of the wireless router. Then set up the wireless router as normal.

[trunks2k]

She complained that I must sell crap for routers because none of them worked with her Mac. That fourth time, though, I showed her the two that were listed as Mac compatible. She examined one, pleasantly said "Oh, yes, that'll work," and took it. Haven't seen her since.

I'm not a mac user and thus haven't had to deal with that, but isn't networking really standardized? A wirelss router that gives off a standard 802.11g/b/a signal should work with any computer that has a card to recieve that signal. Considering how 802.11g/b/a is pretty much the standard, what in the world do macs use?

I'm a Computer Science graduate (shows how much I use macs) and I'm having a tough time understanding how your average router is not Mac compatible. The router should give off the standard signal, and Macs should accept the standard signals. I mean every router I have used, in order to change the settings on it, you just go to it's IP adress of the router, so any computer that understands the basic network protocols (read:TCP/IP) and HTML/Javascript, can change the settings for the router. So yeah, a non-mac compatible router is a bit of an odd concept to me.

[MacPrince]

I have to join the group of folks scratching their heads about this "Mac compatible router" business. Now, I use an Apple wireless router*, but were that to die tomorrow I could easily walk into any big box retailer and pick up a Linksys or a D-Link or what have you and replace it without a hitch. Even if the device doesn't have a setup application on the CD for my Mac, I can plug it in and configure it over the web interface, no problem.


*(Why'd I pick Apple's AirPort Extreme Base Station over the cheaper options? Ironically, it's because it was originally purchased to share a dial-up modem connection. It comes with a built-in 56k modem.)

[RichS]

Just out of curiosity, how would I be able to set that up w/my laptop? I have built-in wireless and a dial up ISP account (b/f lives in the country and there's no DSL or cable either.)

Here's how I did it:

I have an external 56K serial modem which I hooked up to a internet sharing wired router, in this case the SMC Barricade (my boss recommended it), which I bought off of eBay. I have that hooked via ethernet cable to my wireless router. I turned off DHCP on the wireless so the wired is the main router. When any of my wireless machines asks for internet access, it goes through the wireless router to the SMC, which automatically dials the modem and logs on to my ISP. After 5 minutes of inactivity, the modem automatically hangs up. If I know I won't be online for awhile, I switch my modem off.

Wish I would've known about devices like the WiFlyer on a link a few posts down - that looks like it has all of what I did in one box.

[Mr. Rude]

Off topic,
Anyone else other than me keep a dialup modem handy? In case of service outages, I can still fire up the old "morse code" version

[trunks2k]

Off topic,
Anyone else other than me keep a dialup modem handy? In case of service outages, I can still fire up the old "morse code" version

I have one built into my motherboard. But I don't have landline service at my place.