This is an alternative weblog for the existing dave2002 weblog hosted at dave2002.pitas.com. This features material on weblogs, music, art, theatre, travel, news and software and hardware, amongst other things
|
|
| dave2002.alt This is an alternative weblog for the existing dave2002 weblog hosted at dave2002.pitas.com. This features material on weblogs, music, art, theatre, travel, news and software and hardware, amongst other things |
|
My recent furls
Sunday, April 11, 2004 More partial successAfter considerable fiddling around, I finally managed to get the other wireless adapter working with my borrowed iBook. There are major problems because the USB device is difficult to detect. It has to be plugged in and left in, while the machine is rebooted. There is an added complication that the connection does not appear in the obvious place - in Internet Connections. It turns out that the connection is made and set up in the Network Preferences, but it does not appear in an obvious place. The best thing seems to be to set this connection up as the first one to try, and then hope that the browsers and other client software will pick this up - which they do seem to do. The feedback that the connection exists in OS 10.2 is poor - and does not help the configuration process. This seems to be a limitation of the OS X operating systems - at least in version 10.2. If the unit is unplugged this demonstrates that it works (subject to buffering), but plugging it back in seems to require a restart. As with previous experiments, this suggests that the target location is marginal. Reception is adequate at a point just outside the target area, but as the adapter is moved inside, connection drops quite quickly. It seems that the best solution at this stage to get it working, is to buy an extension cable for the USB adapter. If this works it may remove the immediate need to purchase an ASDL modem/router. There will still be the problem that this mode of operation does require that several PCs are turned on, but as I expected when I first thought about using ad hoc networking, this does save quite a moderate amount of money. A modem/router might also have other features, such as a firewall, and being able to have the unit on all the time could be good, though does this justify the extra cost. As I have already pointed out though, it still seems necessary to get these adapters working reliably in order to set up the networks - or alternatively to buy new adapters which may or may not be any better. This means that this will need to be done and tested before possibly buying any new equipment. It is clear that running the remote adapter in its target location will be rather unlikely to work satisfactoriy, but that a modest extension USB cable may enable the remote PC to be configured, and for a working connection to be created. The evidence so far is that this should enable communications at moderate speed, though we might find that to get good transfer rates we do still have to buy and install a modem/router. With luck, we should be able to have working connections within a few days, and then we will decide whether we need to have enhanced data rates necessitating any new equipment. My feelings about the difficulty of creating even a small network are still unchanged - things should be much easier than this, but at least there is now some evidence that it can be done. PS: If you have experiences of your own, or otherwise want to comment, please do so at dave2002. posted by David | 9:04 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||