Wireless router

Regarding the G4 this is likely true, depending on how old it is. The G4 silver fronted CD drawer was compatible with newer cards.

Sadly older cards a rare and therefore silly expensive. That said many older iBooks have been cludged with a third party wireless card so you might be lucky.

As for a router I can confirm these two products work well. I have installed two of the netgears and two of the drayteks for friends. The draytek is built like a brick, I have one and its never let me down, this is reflected in the price.

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/MFR/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=2690

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/MFR/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=539

I can also recommend the company I linked too, I have purchased 6 routers from them, all arrived the next day and when one was not compatible they took it back no issues.

One other thing either of these router has four ethernet ports anyway so you can connect both hard wire and wirelessly

Alan
I am sure Gary is right. In my flat I have a Belkin router which I purchased at PC World and installed my self. I have A G4 Mac with an Airport card, a desktop Pc with a Belkin wireless card and my IBM Thinkpad, all of which work through it just fine and sometimes simultaneously.
At my former marital home there is another Belkin router, with an Imac, an eMac, two Macbooks and a Dell laptop all happily co-existing.

Just remember to lock down access and use encryption to avoid snopping.

The best option to set a list of IPs for the machines you have and deny any others.

Jono

Good point Jono. I am in a block of flats and I have the choice of 3 wireless routers with which to connect!

I've got a Netgear DG834G wireless router, which I bought from the same company as shown in garyi's link. I have managed to use it successfully with my old iBook G3 and my new Intel iMac G5. The G3 iBook did not come equipped with an airport card but I managed to get one off eBay for 70-odd quid. The G5 iMac is of course Airport Extreme equipped and actually works very well. I have also configured my router so that it only accepts the IP addresses of my iMac and my Airport Express unit.

So far as wireless routers also have a look at Zyxel, they seem to have a good reputation, I have one and it's been very reliable.

As for a card for the G4 I take it you mean a tower not an iMac? If so you might be able to get away with a Broadcom based PCI wireless card which cost about £15, apparently it'll be recognised as some variety of Airport card.

Yes its important to stress an Airport card is just apples fancy arsed name for a wireless card.

However the connections may well be different hence the requirement to cludge.

It would be better to know which G4 the poster has.

quote:

The best option to set a list of IPs for the machines you have and deny any others

No disrespect intended, but this is the weakest form of wireless security you could impose. IP masquerading is easy to do as is MAC address masquerading.

If you are going to use wireless security, you may be better served using WPA or at least WEP.

The G4 i have is the older one (not the silver fronted one). It is sort of grey blue (it may be called the 'digital audio' one as a friend called it). It is the tower not the emac.
Garyi: the netgear you show,will it then work the same as my dg834 but with wireless capability?

Yes it will.

As for the security thing, we can set that up when you get it, don't panic about it, its easy.

I don't know what to buy, but I know what not. Do not bother with one of Apple's base stations. They are massively overpriced and perform rather badly (mine struggles to cover our relatively small flat). At the time I bought it (some three years back) choice was limited, but I have regretted it.

Actually, I know someone who's bought BT's wireless router/adsl modem thingy (voyager 2110, I think) and it actually works remarkably well (and was one of the simplest to set up I have come across).

regards, Tam

I have never used an apple base station so cannot comment.

However the BT stuff is without doubt the biggest pile of shit sent forth from hell. They are built as cheaply possible as they are bundled free. Avoid at all costs.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
However the BT stuff is without doubt the biggest pile of shit sent forth from hell. They are built as cheaply possible as they are bundled free. Avoid at all costs.

I have the adsl-ethernet modem here (which runs into my airport) and I have to say I've never had the ghost of a problem with it. Ditto the people I know with the wireless version.

regards, Tam

Fair enough. Its hardly worth an argument. The three I installed (admittedly 2 were the speedtouch USB versions) were all a complete nightmare. Perhaps yours is just a straight forward ethernet connection?

BT have now moved on to ethernet things (though some still have a usb port) - I have heard horror stories about usb modems and would not touch one with a barge pole.

regards, Tam

quote:

Originally posted by sonofcolin:

quote:

The best option to set a list of IPs for the machines you have and deny any others

No disrespect intended, but this is the weakest form of wireless security you could impose. IP masquerading is easy to do as is MAC address masquerading.

If you are going to use wireless security, you may be better served using WPA or at least WEP.

Completely agree.

quote:

Originally posted by Tam:
I don't know what to buy, but I know what not. Do not bother with one of Apple's base stations.

I've never had a problem with my Airport Base Station, they are not cheap though.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Fair enough. Its hardly worth an argument. The three I installed (admittedly 2 were the speedtouch USB versions) were all a complete nightmare. Perhaps yours is just a straight forward ethernet connection?

I'm using a SpeedTouch USB modem now on a PowerMac G5 - no real problems to speak off, but an Ethernet router is more versatile.

I have a Cisco SoHo 97 DSL router, it has a silly web interface that only works on a PC running IE for Windoze (and even then it's fussy); it creates an IOS configuration with incorrect NAT rules - you simply edit the IOS running-config from a terminal session to correct this and you're up and running- ideal for the novice.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
I've never had a problem with my Airport Base Station, they are not cheap though.

In fairness, it hasn't gone wrong, but the range is shockingly poor (and given the cost it ought to be better). That said, more recent models may be.

regards, Tam

ROTF Why?

A wireless internet ADSL router is now 40 quid, why put yourself through all that crap?

I think i will go for the dg834g. This i believe has everything my current one has (dg834)i.e. built in modem,firewall.

I have ordered a dg834g from amazon. Watch this space as i may be back begging for help when the macbook and router arrive. Cheers.

quote:

Originally posted by sonofcolin:

quote:

The best option to set a list of IPs for the machines you have and deny any others

No disrespect intended, but this is the weakest form of wireless security you could impose. IP masquerading is easy to do as is MAC address masquerading.

If you are going to use wireless security, you may be better served using WPA or at least WEP.

If you note I suggested this plus setting access list, but you are right in that IP spoofing is quite easy to achieve.

You might also check that bluetooth is shut down as well as this is also a simple route in. One of my mates recently found 10 plus devices to tap into in a small country hotel.

Jono

My dg834g arrived today. I was hoping i could just swap it round with my dg834 (non wireless) router and it would work but alas no.
What am i missing? A friend installed the dg834 but i cannot remember what he did and he is unavailable at the moment.