Wireless Fun

2002-05-06 16:14 ☼ post

We got a couple airport cards for our portable iMac carts here at work so I’ve been playing around with the AirPort 2.0′s software basestation capabilities. It seems to work pretty well all things considered.

On the first iMac that I setup today I was fairly surprised to find an open WiFi network running somewhere nearby. I’m guessing a student across the street from our building has some kind of unsecured access point. I was able to get an ip address and connect to the Internet using their AP without any problems. Kind of funny/scary.

Right now I’m testing our building to see how well the signal travels. I put an iMac acting as software base station in our network closet and now I’m tooling around upstairs with the other iMac. The network connection is working surprisingly well. We’re actually planning to install two Lucent access points plus some pricey RAD wire antennas in our ceiling which are suppose to provide even better signal strength, but that’s probably a couple months off still.

I can’t wait until I have a computer that has WiFi built in (I can get a card for my PowerBook, but then I lose FireWire). Maybe if they introduce a G4 iBook at MacWorld New York….