Going wireless with AOL???
 

I'm about to set up a wireless network in an office, 3 users and it's AOL broadband. Anyone done this?

Any hints?

/E

Pretty straightforward -- AOLUK's service works great w/wireless. There's lots of info out there, and you can pick up a good wireless router on the cheap (Linksys, Netgear, etc, all make devices that are nearly plug and play).

Router and account exist. But it's currently all ethernet. I have an airport extreme base station that is going in. My MBP is airport wifi so need to get USB wifi dongles for the PC desktops the other guys use.

What I'm thinking is that AOL requires a log in so I guess we need to set up AOL software on the other machines as well, right?

/E

Nope, if you set up a wireless broadband router (or a wired modem with an appropriate RJ45 connection to a separate wired or wireless router) then you configure that piece of kit with the user name and password of the primary AOL account. I've done this at home and neither of my laptops (not to mention the Pocket PC) currently has the AOL client software installed.

If you go into your AOL client software and log on, look for something along the lines of "Home Netorking". There's an area (complete with forums) where you can get all the settings to plug into whatever piece of kit you buy. Last time I checked, AOL only supported a couple of wireless broadband routers but any standard wired or wireless router with a built in broadband modem should work.

The key thing to remember; the user name you put into your wireless router has to be in the format:

[email protected]

That caught me out for an hour or so when I set up my wireless router for the first time.