No trouble at all with CAT5 at that distance. If you do not want to drill holes wireless is good. (but cables are cheaper) I use wireless at 11Mbps from Melco/Buffalo I have a PCMCIA adapter with a Melco wireless card in the desktop PC upstairs and a wireless hub colocated with my cable modem.
Mandrake 8.1 recognises the Melco PCMCIA wireless card automagically. The only issue I had was configuring the PCI-PCMCIA adapter. This is a common issue with several makes of wireless PCI-PCMCIA adapters, but there is an excellent HOWTO available, and of course advice available from other users. The Lucent Orinoco wireless system is very popular with Linux users, and there are tools developed specially for it. useful links are http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/korinoco/ There are 11 wireless channels to choose from to avoid interference (Microwave ovens can be an issue on some channels) The data is encrypted and so is safe, only computers in your workgroup can decode it. Of course passing blackhats with a supercomputer in their car could crack the encryption, but is your data really worth stealing? Range can be an issue. The Meco system I use has an integral antenna which is not really up to going through more than 1 or 2 walls. The manufacturers quote range as 300ft, but that is in clear air. Where the target device is more than 2 walls away I have to use an external antenna which adds to the cost. Other manufacturers such as cisco have a better (larger) antenna on the PCMCIA card HTH Derek On Saturday 10 November 2001 22:37, you wrote: > Hi, everybody. I have a DSL connection coming in to the upstairs > computer. I'd like to connect (withought having to get a new modem) a > computer downstairs to the same connection. Can I send a cat5 cable > down throught the wall from the router to the downstairs computer? > (approx. 30-40 feet) Is there a limit to cat5 length in order to remain > effective? Do I need a wireless solution? is that even safe? > > -Paul Rodr�guez > > > _________________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com >
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