Setting Up a Mixed Network: Where Wired Meets Wireless

If you are just a little perplexed at making the decision between a wired and a wireless home network, there's nothing wrong with that. As you have learned, each type of network is the better choice for certain purposes. That's why you might actually decide that part of your home network should be wired and part of it should be wireless. This section provides you with a quick look at how this impacts your equipment choices.

Wired/Wireless Routers

The first requirement for a mixed wired (Ethernet) and wireless network is that you need to be able to supply a network signal to both wired and wireless devices. Fortunately, this presents no problem because the Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband Router recommended earlier (and shown in Figure 4-7) easily handles both tasks. In addition to the wireless access point that is built in to the WRT54GS, the unit also includes a four-port wired switch.