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Is this possible with apple wi-fi products?

H

hawk1226

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 8, 2008
55
0
Instead of guessing about stuff like this, i look to this forum to get my answers. My closest friends were considering splitting the cost for wi-fi in my house (its like 8 of them so split it isn't too much per person).

What i was wondering was if any of the products apple sold simply did the following:

plug it into the wall of the internet outlet in your room and instead of it connecting to a computer to supply the internet, it would make the room wifi. Essentially, internet would be brought to my room in a wired format and then plug something into the outlet to make it wi-fi in my room?

I know their is the base station and the extender and would either of these be able to do that?
 
From what I understand of your question; I'm inclined to say that this is the effect which any wireless router achieves.
 
Hm...i guess what i want to know is if i need to go with the base station or does the extender plug into a ethernet jack and extend the wired or wireless internet? I like to think i'm knowledgeable, but in this area i truly know nothing.
 
-hawk1226

All routers wireless or otherwise have to hook to the supplied Internet connection usine the WAN port. It doesn't matter how long the wire is leading into the room, whether that be coming into the house and strung along the floor before it gets to the router, or coming out of the cable modem right next to it.
 
patrick0brien said:
-hawk1226

All routers wireless or otherwise have to hook to the supplied Internet connection usine the WAN port. It doesn't matter how long the wire is leading into the room, whether that be coming into the house and strung along the floor before it gets to the router, or coming out of the cable modem right next to it.
Click to expand...

So essentially in my house I have the cable modem downstairs in the basement. I'd need to have the base station downthere connected to the modem? Or its equivalent having the base station plug into the wall of my room through the ethernet outlet?
 
hawk1226 said:
So essentially in my house I have the cable modem downstairs in the basement. I'd need to have the base station downthere connected to the modem? Or its equivalent having the base station plug into the wall of my room through the ethernet outlet?
Click to expand...

-hawk1226

Ah-ha! You have CAT5 outlets in the house. There's the rub.

It doesn't change the need to get the wire from the Cable Modem to the Router's WAN port, but doing so through the wall introduces a new level of complexity. Just so happens I've dealt with this in a number of places I've lived - including now.

Here's the trick. Likely this in't the only outlet in the house. What you need to do is locate where all of the Cat-% cables are coming together. More than likely, this will be near, if not actually in the box that contains the Phone interchange.

Once you locate this, inspect the connection. If it is that block of 'tweezers' you typically see with a phone interchange (called an M-Block) this could be iffy. The best thing to do - if you really want to do this is replace the M-Block with a Structured Wiring Panel, that allows you, using jumpers, to decide which port in the house is Phone, and which is LAN.

What you need to do ultimately is connect the outlet you plug the Modem into to the outlet you have upstairs. You do this through that box. And the Structured wiring panel is the best way - adds value to the home too.
 
Thanks for the help patrick...I can't say i understand everything you said (it was pretty technical), but i do appreciate the effort. I'll keep looking into this and i may just need to invest in wireless for the entire house...
 
Maybe I missed something, but couldn't you just connect the wireless router directly to the cable modem in the basement? We also have Cat5 jacks in all our rooms at my house, but we basically only use them for an old iMac without Airport and an XBox. The wireless router is plugged into a hub, which is plugged into the cable modem...all in one central location. The signal is great..it goes through 3 floors.
 
yeah technically i could, but i was just investigating into this because the basement is pretty far below and signal might not be that great, and thus we might have to invest in extenders etc... and this becomes an expensive process, so i was seeing if there was someway to just create wireless in specific rooms. I'll probably just go with the base station downstairs.
 
hawk1226 said:
yeah technically i could, but i was just investigating into this because the basement is pretty far below and signal might not be that great, and thus we might have to invest in extenders etc... and this becomes an expensive process, so i was seeing if there was someway to just create wireless in specific rooms. I'll probably just go with the base station downstairs.
Click to expand...

You could use your mac to share the internet wirelessly providing you have an airport card.
It essentially makes your mac the base station although the signal my not be the strongest if you have to cover the whole house.
You can find that feature in system preferences under sharing.
 
wait... if there are cat5 outlets all over, dont they connect back to the modem at some point? couldnt you just plug a router into one of these outlets upstairs?
 
I went to the applestore this weekend and asked and it turns out that the Airport Express product has the function that i want. That is i can plug it into the ethernet outlet in my room and it converts internet into wi-fi for up to 50 feet. Its been a hot product and they didn't have any in the store so i had to order mine. Thought i would post this if anyone else had wondered about this kind of capability
 
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