This afternoon I have been replacing my house network.

The original was a thin ethernet (coax) backbone with a single 3Com mini-hub acting as a media converter sitting in my front room with a couple of long cat 5 drop cables trailing around the edge of the room to get to my big machine and the place I usually use my laptop.

The new network is based upon a Netlink WiFi Router/Switch sitting in my spare room connected directly to my two SPARCstations and my main machine with a long cable trailing downstairs to the big machine in the living room. My laptop now has a Belkin WiFi PCMCIA card.

As for the WiFi card and Linux is concerned.. I plugged in the card, switched on the machine, it booted, if configured and it worked.. I was dead impressed with Mandrake 9.0’s support.. Though it does seem to be using the old Wavelan driver rather than the newer one.

The total cost of the hardware, including the cables was £222. The prices at PC World (other than for the cables) were surprisingly as good as I could get on the net.

All I need now is ADSL and an ADSL ethernet modem. 😉