Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 12: Networking Your Entertainment Center
Adding Wi-Fi to Ethernet A/V gear
In the future, we expect that most networked entertainment gear will have
built-in Wi-Fi. And in fact, several high-end receivers and TVs do have built-in
Wi-Fi today. (An example of this is Denon’s AVR-4308CI receiver, which costs
$2,500 and includes built-in 802.11g networking.) Manufacturers have been
reluctant to incorporate Wi-Fi due to the rapid pace of technological change
(802.11b being replaced by 802.11g, which is now being replaced by 802.11n).
Rather than be caught with outdated wireless technology, many manufacturers
have skipped wireless entirely.
Unfortunately for us as consumers, nothing is worse than having a great
piece of entertainment gear that you want to get onto your home network,
but the nearest outlet is yards away and you don’t have a cable long enough
to plug it in. So, you can imagine Danny’s face when he had his brand-new,
networking-capable AudioReQuest system (www.request.com) with no
Ethernet connection near to plug it into. Argh!
To get this gear on your net, you need a wireless bridge. A popular model is the
D-Link (www.d-link.com, $89) DWL-G820 Wireless Ethernet Bridge (802.11g)
that comes with Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2) and 128-bit WEP security. On
the back is a simple Ethernet port that enables you to bring any networkable
device onto your wireless backbone. Another popular product is the 802.11g
Apple Airport Express (www.apple.com, $99), which is a great little multipurpose
device that is a media adapter, a wireless Ethernet bridge, a travel
router, an access point, and a print server all in one slick white package.
(It can’t do all these things at once, but it can be configured for any of these
uses.) Oh, and it can play music purchased at the iTunes store (and it supports
WPA2).
Other Ethernet bridge products include the Linksys WET-54G Wireless-G
Ethernet Bridge (www.linksys.com, $89.99) and the Belkin F5D7330 802.11g
Wireless Ethernet Bridge and Game Adapter (www.belkin.com, $100).
All the wireless bridges we mention here are 802.11g and not 802.11n. That’s
the case simply because, as we write, 802.11n is still a new technology and
most vendors have only gotten around to releasing 802.11n access points,
wireless routers, and network adapter cards. We fully expect to see 802.11n
variants of the wireless bridges discussed in the two previous chapters to be
released in early 2008 — likely by the time you read this.
Here are a couple of tips for buying wireless bridges:
� Buy at least 802.11g for this application. You need the bandwidth, and
802.11n will be an even better choice, when it becomes available. Video
doesn’t work well at 802.11b speeds, so if you see an older 802.11b product
of this sort on eBay, resist the urge to buy it.
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