Wireless Adapter for Wired Router?

I have a wired home network, with a wired router. GF has a notebook
with a wireless feature on it.

I was thinking I'd have to buy a wireless router and plug it into my
router in order to allow her to have network at my place. Is that the
case, or do they make some sort of wireless attachment that might plug
into one of the network ports on my wired router?

Thanks!

On Thu, 11 May 2006 21:00:06 -0500, phelper wrote:

>I have a wired home network, with a wired router. GF has a notebook
>with a wireless feature on it.
>
>I was thinking I'd have to buy a wireless router and plug it into my
>router in order to allow her to have network at my place. Is that the
>case, or do they make some sort of wireless attachment that might plug
>into one of the network ports on my wired router?
>
>Thanks!

You may be thinking of a Wireless Access Point (aka "WAP") and you'd be
correct. But you can also use a wireless router as a WAP by uplinking it via
one its LAN ports (and not using its WAN port at all). And you may find
wireless routers are significantly cheaper than true WAPs.

I suggest you replace your existing router with a wireless/4-port router as
the cheapest and easiest solution. If you need more lines than the replacement
router provides you can use your old router as a switch by uplinking it via
one of its LAN ports (and not using its WAN port at all - sound familiar?
You'd also want to disable the DHCP server on the old router - if you need
DHCP the new router can provide that service for the entire LAN.