My manager wants to set up a wireless network in his home. It will consist of 1 desktop computer (Printer And Internet Access) and 2 laptops. He lives in a no broadband area -( so he wants shared dialup. The desktop right now is Windows 98 which we might be upgrading to Win2k. The two laptops are Win XP Home.

What will he need to purchase to get started?

I assume:

2 Wireless PCMIA nic cards

1 Wireless PCI/USB nic card

1 Wireless Access Point

Is this it? Does the access point work as a switch or is a switch also needed. Remember this will be sharing dialup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Never done wireless.

You got it. The access points are usually switches with 4 ports for additional lan access as well as the wireless connections. Go for 802.11g as that will maximize his throughput internally. It won't, however, effect his dialup, and the prices have dropped dramaticly recently.

1) Disable DHCP on the WAP, let ICS on the dialup machine hand out IP addresses. yo will have to change the WAP IP address to be compatible with ICS addressing, 192.168.0.x with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

2) Set ICS on the dialup machine (right click network connection, sharing tab>share this conection)

3) install wifi nic drivers in all machines (set for infrastructer mode)

4) configure passwords and wep/WPA (recommend WPA if available)

5) turn on all pc's, and you are done. internet will now work on all of them.