Wireless..... MAC.... PC...... Netgear.... Will it?

Hiya guys!

Frist post, so I'll introduce myself. I'm Dan! **waves**

Now the real issue... Anybody here had experience with the following:

1) Wireless networking
2) Networking a MAC with a Windows PC
3) Apple Airport Extreme card and netgear DG834G

If so, then maybe you can help

Ok, I've done a million and one wireless network implementations in the last year or so... but never have they involved a MAC... MAC scare me to much... I'm almost wetting myself by coming to this forum... MAC are scary... they don't crash, they don't freeze... THEY LOOK NICE.... GIVE ME A COMPUTER ANYDAY :P

Apple have this thing called a Aiport Extreme Card... it appears to simply be a PCI Wi-Fi card inside the laptop... So the G4 iBook will be wireless client... Question: Will the laptop have a GUI interface for the card, to sort SSID and WEP issues?

Also in this equation is a big G5... now this will NOT use any form of wireless to comunicate... This will interface with "hopefully" the Netgear DG834G via a nice simple cat!

Then just to add some variety, theirs a nice Windows Laptop that'll use a Wi-Fi card sticking out its PCMICA slot.

So the issues are:

1) Will Netgear router be compatible with Airport Extreme Card?

2) How on a MAC do I access TCP/IP settings

G5 and 4 both use OS 10.3.6

Any other advice I can get would be great

I have tried this config with a broadband connection and it won't work for you. Apple sells a wireless hub called a Airport and this is what will provide connectivity to a broadband connection and a switch/hub for other PCs or Apples to connect to via wired drops. I do not know how good a PC based wireless card will work with the Airport, but from my experience, Apple stuff does live well in Intel world.

Apple does have a great guide to Netowrk connectivity for the Airport on their support web site. This should answer any questions, but it looks like you might need to spend a couple hundred dollars on an Airport.

This is purely speculation since I haven't used either technology before but I would have thought that Apples AirportExtreme card wouldn't have a problem talking to other wireless hubs since they are all based on the same technology, and are supposed to conform to a set of standards. But as mwallace said using an AirportExtreme Basestation is probably going to be easier .

Anyway, you should be able to access all your IP/TCP stuff via the System Preferences: where you set up your internet connections (Dialup/Broad Band etc.).

Mark.

hi

i've used a dg834g with an apple powerbook g4 (which has an internal airport extreme card) with no problems at all (i also use a sony vaio laptop to connect to it at the same time and share drives etc). the apple names for wireless networks are easy to understand:

airport = 802.11b
airport extreme - 802.11g

it was ridiculously easy to set up using the "network" panel in the "system preferences" under the "apple" menu at the top left (if you're using os x)

the only thing i haven't sorted out is encryption because basically i couldn't be bothered - i just used the wireless station access control list using the mac address of the airport extreme card. i'm sure it's doable in 30 mins or so of concentration (although i don't think os x supports wpa).

i'm a recent mac convert from a pc - the number of times i've felt a warm, comfortable feeling while doing stuff like setting up wireless networks is immense - none of that fiddling about with weird control panels, just a series of simple walk-throughs!

adriant is right, the technology is exactly the same between PC based wireless and Apple's Airport wireless. I have a linksys wireless router which I connect to flawlessly with a powerbook/airport card and a Dell laptop/built in card. One place they do (or at least did, I'm not sure about Airport Extreme) differ is in WEP encryption rates. Airport offers encryption at 40-bit and 128-bit, while Linksys offers it at 64-bit and 128-bit. You have to make sure and use the common denominator of 128-bit or you could run into issues.