Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ehjay · Apr 4, 2003, 05:56 PM

i'm sure it's probably been discussed before, and i don't mean to bring up old topics..

i've heard of people using one computer as the base station and being able to go from there.

possible? if so, say i stick an aiport extreme card in my g4, should work with the airport card upstairs in imac? (keep in mind that'd be a computer -as- the base station, one with g, the other with b.)

ehjay · Apr 4, 2003, 05:58 PM

and to clarify, this would still route the connection, as if it were being run under a real base station, correct?

jtbowden · Apr 4, 2003, 06:07 PM

Should work just fine. Hook up one computer to a land line and then go to the Sharing Pane in System Prefs and under the Internet tab choose "Share your Internet connection with Airport-equipped computers"

Voila! Should be no sweat assuming they aren't too far apart.

aaanorton · Apr 4, 2003, 06:11 PM

Originally posted by ehjay:
i've heard of people using one computer as the base station and being able to go from there.

possible?

This was just being discussed in the software forum here. The short answer is yes, but I still recommend a wireless router. Read that thread and repost here if you still have ?s.

ehjay · Apr 4, 2003, 06:16 PM

i see.

any pros / cons besides those listed that you can think of? (to getting a router instead.)

i've recently purchased two routers, neither works cooperativley with my macs.. mostly due to ISP not being router-friendly.

i'd like to spare the aggravation of another hardware piece to setup, but if the pros outway the cons i could go for a seperate router.

software routing doesn't grant me the same encryption the base station normally would?

aaanorton · Apr 4, 2003, 06:40 PM

Originally posted by ehjay:
i see.

any pros / cons besides those listed that you can think of? (to getting a router instead.)

Uh well, those are really enough! Doesn't sound like much, but this is important stuff.

i've recently purchased two routers, neither works cooperativley with my macs.. mostly due to ISP not being router-friendly.

i'd like to spare the aggravation of another hardware piece to setup, but if the pros outway the cons i could go for a seperate router.

I'm not buying this. If ANYTHING, you'd run into a situation where a router had Windows only set up software. This would be VERY VERY rare, as virtually all of them used web based set up features. An ISP, though, would not be able to tell a router from a computer. I don't think it's possible for them to "disable" router usage, though they CAN frown on it and not support it. You only need one router. So if you get a wireless one, you can get rid of/sell all the others.
I'm afraid we're lookin' at a user-error situation here...

software routing doesn't grant me the same encryption the base station normally would?

No, I meant that having a router was safer than not having one. If you have a router AND employ software base station, that is just as secure. The key is the router. If you have a couple/few lieing around, sell 'em and buy that unit I linked to for 50 bucks.

ehjay · Apr 4, 2003, 07:09 PM

i don't know about user-error, i'm fairly certain attbi used to catalog the mac address of the computer they connected the modem to, refuses others.

besides, most troubles are probably due to attbi being recently purchased and bought out by comcast.. systems changing and all.

anyhow, i should probably pick up a router.. apple's base station provide enough security/etc? (i have a large rebate on apple hardware purchases, so were i to get anything, it'd probably be apple's.)

aaanorton · Apr 4, 2003, 07:23 PM

Originally posted by ehjay:
i don't know about user-error, i'm fairly certain attbi used to catalog the mac address of the computer they connected the modem to, refuses others.

I was just yankin your chain... This is pretty common for ISPs to do. That's why most recent routers have MAC address cloning. This feature copies the Mac address of your (registered) Mac as it's own. Your ISP can only see the first device connected to the web. Problem solved. The other way to deal with this is to call your ISP and tell 'em you got a new computer and the MAC address of it is.... Then you give them your router's MAC address.

anyhow, i should probably pick up a router.. apple's base station provide enough security/etc? (i have a large rebate on apple hardware purchases, so were i to get anything, it'd probably be apple's.)

All of these routers provide basically the same security: so-so. WEP, MAC address filtering (just like your ISP, but allowing only your comp(s)) and possibly SSID broadcasting blocking, so your LAN is less evident to passers-by. These are enough for most users, though a determined person with time on his/her hands can get around them.
Apple's AEBS is nice, particularly it's USB printersharing feature. Also, if you ever need to extend your LAN, you can just buy another AEBS, plug it in and it will bridge the LAN wirelessly. Cool.