questions about going wireless

[Tiggeroo]

I want to go wireless with my internet but I have a couple questions. Can I have both wireless and regular set-up at the same time. Do all the pc's in the house have to go wireless?
Right now in my living room I have a router. Off of this are in various rooms 3/4 different pc's. I also have a vonage router hooked into it. In addition I have a second hard drive that runs into the router and that all the household pc's can tap into. The problem is my router is short by one plug, therefore we have to unplug and plug in pc's and somebody is always accidentally unplugging the phone and leaving it off.
I want to make my laptop wireless and eventually two other pc's in the house. What is the maximum number of ports you can get on a wireless router as what I"m seeing is four ports. That would work if I can keep the regular router for the external hard drive and the phone line. Can I do this? Thanks alot. I know this is alot of ????

 

[pandamom]

Yes you can have wired and wireless connections at the same time if your router supports it. My router supports 4 wired connections (we use two) and at least 20 wireless (we use it for 2 tivos and 2 laptops -- more laptops if we have guests). Just be careful when you setup your system that you take proper security measures (Don't take default system name, use encryption, specify mac addresses allowed to connect, etc.) Good luck.

 

[Miss Kelly]

To add on a question to this thread -

How do you make sure your connection is secure? We just recently went wireless and I don't have a clue if we are protected. Thanks!

 

[nephthys43]

To add on a question to this thread -

How do you make sure your connection is secure? We just recently went wireless and I don't have a clue if we are protected. Thanks!

does your connection have a password? if it's secure, it will have a password that has to be entered before you can connect to it. once you're logged into the network, you won't have to enter it again, unless you disconnect. call your isp provider and they can walk you through setting up a secure connection.