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I never had any experience with the above. I have a network that connects to a DSL wired router. With the 802.11 modem on the notebook, can I hook it up to my network and thus allow me to see other computers and browse the net? If so, what do I need?

Also at home I have 56k access. Is there a way I can access the internet through my 56k via this wireless modem in my notebook? Or would'nt I need something else?

Thanks in advance for help.

You cannot hook up to your network unless you have a wireless router (or wired+wireless combo)

You cannot use your 56k connection without the aforementioned router in combination with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing)...which is a waste. Might as well plug the phone jack into the laptop when you want to go online.

The flyer i've got makes no mention of any 56k modems inside the notebook so I assumed that it does not have one. Ill check the website.

Can I link the wired router to the wireless one or can I only use one or the other? Or buy a combo altogether?

I know very little about wireless BUT I have a wireless network at home with 3 machines that all share the network and a dial-up connect. Here's what I use...

1. 1 USB external wireless adapter. On machine with internet.
2. 1 Internal wireless adapter on a desktop.
3. 1 Laptop with built in wireless adapter.

What I did next...
1. Attach all the cards and let windows detect and install them. Change the properties in control panel on each card to match. In this case mainly making them all 802.1g only as all the cards and laptop are all G compatible.
2. Set an IP address on my dial-up machines wireless adapter to 192.168.0.1 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0.
3. On all computers starting the with one with dial-up, I added a connection to the wireless networks with WEP encryption and made sure to set to only look for ad-hoc networks.
4. Ran the network setup wizard on the dial-up machine to share the internet.
5. Ran the network setup wizrd on the other machines to use the dial-up machine as the gateway.

Now, this all took several attempts to get working properly but I finally have all machines connected and internet shared between them all. I did however had to add a gateway to one of the machines that had difficulty seeing the dial-up machine. That is in the TCP/IP properties box.

I did try to share both a wired network and a wireless network together but could not get it working at all. I could only get either a wired -or- a wireless network shared but not both.

And, don't worry about what Testi said. It is worth it IMHO to share even a lowly dial-up but with that being said, keep in mind my dial-up runs at 52K routinely so I spose if your dial-up is crap then it may not be worth it so much.

Finally, here's where I got my network setup guidelines from after Linksys could not answer my questions...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/usin ... ril08.mspx

I'm just a snob. I wouldn't even use the Internet if all I had was dial-up

Yes, the machine with the 56K modem will have to act as an Internet Gateway. This is enabled with Internet Connection Sharing (ICS).

If you have a switch connected to your current gateway, then simply plugging a wireless access point into the switch is how the wi-fi laptop will access the 'net.

However - be aware - that securing wireless networks is absolutely, mind-bogglingly, amaqzingly fucked up! I have yet to find a WAP (and I've installed 6 different types) where I can set security without less than 2 hours of cuking around and at least 6 router resets.

Also, be aware, that the WAP will undoubtedly be on a different IP range and subnet mask. Often these devices can be tricky to force into your IP range and onto your subnet.

It's all doable - but you'll spend quite a bit of time doing it - and if you aren't familiar with TCP/IP networking and the technicalities of it, then you will have trouble.

DO NOT LET PEOPLE WAR DRIVE YOUR WIRELESS NETWORK! IT *MUST* BE SECURED!