Network in my rez apartment.

[Gene126]

My friends and I have a 4 bedroom on campus residence apartment for the school year. We are getting our internet through the schools wireless 802.11b wireless network. But we also want to network our 4 computer together to share files and play lan games.

Each of us will have a 802.11 card in our computer to recieve the internet. Can we also network our 4 computers together using a 802.11b/g wireless router and the same cards we use to recieve the internet or do we each need to wireless 802.11 cards?

Thanks.

 

[valve1138]

just by virtue of the fact you are using the schools network you should be good to go. unless they are blocking SMB traffic at the access point, which I highly doubt.

 

[Rombus]

Hi from a ResNet student admin (Not from your school of course, but I can still shed some light on stuff for ya)
Ok, You SHOULD Be able to do file transfers using your schools B network just fine, just go to \\computername or \\ipaddy and you can get to windows shares. Most lan games work just fine when the people are in the same building or close by, Since your all connecting to the same AP, you should be fine here.

Now what it sounds like you want to do is use a B/G Router so you can get the G Speeds for file transfers, Right? Well here it gets a bit complicated, You could very easily setup 2 different connections, one for your ResNet, and one for your room access point, But you couldn’t use both at the same time. You didn’t say if you had G or B cards in your computes, but if you have Bs, this will be no faster than doing it though the schools AP. I don’t know what AP you have, but my Linksys WRT54G has some 3rd Party Firmware has a Client Mode which i THINK will allow you to connect to your router to your schools AP and then you connect to your router for the G speed. Note i never tried this, so i have no idea how/if it will work.

My final suggestion is to get a switch or a hub and some cat 5 cable, that way you can have 100mbps speeds for your games and transfers, and still have wireless access. Sure its a cord, but you don’t need to use it all the time!

Good Luck!

 

[M11]

^^Cat 5 will be your best bet, for low latency games and especially file transfer. I know some schools have blocked SMB between student machines out of piracy and security concerns.

 

[m0unds]

i totally agree with the cat5 solution for b/w computer lanning and file xfers-- wireless ethernet and internet connections have inherent latency stability issues in gaming, and you can get ahold of some cat5 and a switch or ethernet router on the cheap, as well