I want to set up a 3 computer home network. One computer in a basement and the rest upstairs. the distance from each computer is about 20 feet. i dont want to drill holes in my walls and go through all that mess. But, if regular wiring is better, i will drill. is wireless better and should i do it? what are the advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages are or course no wires!~ If you go with the 802.11a standard you can get up to 72mb per second. (As opposed to 802.11b which is only 11mb per second!)
Disadvantages are cost and security. If you go with the netgear wireless router (Which I highly recommend) you're going to get set back about 335.00 for the access point and 135.00 per card. The main disadvantage in my mind is security though. Wireless networks are still very unsecure. Someone who knows what they are doing can tap in if they are within range of your access point with minimal effort.

An alternative would be a HPNA network. (home phone network adapter) An HPNA network uses your existing phone lines in the house as an 11mb per second network that does not tie up the phone. Netgear has those also. They are cheaper, more secure, but slower. Of course u have to have a phone jack in that basement you're talking about!! I don't know if you do or not!

If you do I would go with the HPNA for cost and security. You should see no problems on a 10mb/sec network even if you are using Cable/DSl because they are both only 1.5MB/sec max. Certainly no problems with a modem! You could even run a T1 over a 10mb/sec network as it is only 6mb/sec internet.

Hope that helps.

Nea

It'll be slow, very slow at transfering between nodes. You may not be able to play music or video off another machine. Wireless speed drops off quickly in a few feet with walls. Phone line networks may be cheaper and faster from upper floor to bottom. Do you have twisted pair phone wire? (10bt) Can you pull cat5 through the house using the phone wire? Wire on the outside of the house?

It pretty much depends on if you have DSL (phone networking may not work with filters)and why are you networking in the first place. Security is another issue.

i have a cable connection and want to share it

I ran cat 5 cables in my townhome from attic to basement through the hole for main drain pipe which goes all the way to basement.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

WIRELESS IS A FUSS AND WILL HAVE NO END OF PROBLEMS

Kdoe,

How's your home network going??
I had a similar problem -- not really wanting to pull cables thru walls.
I have this setup which is a little more
expensive but has good firewall security:

SB4100 Cablemodem to:
D-Link DI-704 Router's WAN port.
One computer direct connect to a router port.
Netgear PE102 Phoneline10X connect to a router port.
Phoneline10X port out into house phonejack.
Upstairs computers plug into phonejacks.
Netgear phoneline10X NIC in those computers
(can do this for a few others too).

All this assumes you have 4 pair phoneline
and are using only 1 pair.

The cost is around
$50-80 for DI-704
$150 for PE102 (yeah kinda steep)
$20 for each Phoneline10X NIC.

I've had good luck with it. The upstairs can pull the capped max 1.5 mbits to the network no problem and computer to computer is faster of course.

jim