It was a miserable, rainy Sunday afternoon, so naturally I decided to spend it inside, tearing apart and re-building my home network. The impetus for this technological hatchet job was my brand-spanking new Airport Express, which is a wireless hub that you can use to extend an existing wireless network (well, an Apple one at least) and which can be used to stream music from Windows or Mac computer to your stereo.

Very geeky. Very fun.

Problems in the Note of G

I was able to quickly and easily connect the Airport Express to my existing wireless network, created using a Netgear MR814 WiFi B router. Unfortunately, that's where I hit my first snag -- while this allowed my wife's Viao (running Windows XP) to see the stereo and play songs to it, the fact that the Netgear router was running the B standard rather than the newer (and faster) G standard meant that the stream kept hiccupping.

I thought I might be able to work around this problem by moving the Netgear router from the third floor to the second (something I wanted to do anyway, to improve the wireless connection around the house) but alas, the problem remained. The real solution is to replace the Netgear B router with one that supports G. I'm not sure how I'll handle that -- probably with another Airport Express, since the first one worked so well. Until then I've got two wireless networks in the house; one for internet, one for music. Not an ideal solution, but it'll do until I can scrape together enough freelance cash to upgrade.

One other thing I discovered about Airport Express is that the streaming music feature only works with computers that have WiFi G cards installed, which means no streaming from my old iMac G3 with its little WiFi B adapter. Instead, I'll need to get a WiFi G dongle for it; fortunately those are fairly cheap now ($50 at Circuit City).

On the plus side, moving the wireless router to the 2nd floor has done wonders for signal strength throughout the house; I can now get five bars anywhere in the house, and even pick up a good four bar signal on the front and back porches.

Remote Desktop Voodoo

One of my goals today was coming up with a better way of dealing with my print server, an ancient Pentium III 450 Mhz machine running Windows XP and serving up a connection to an even more ancient (but still perfectly functional) HP LaserJet 5P printer. It's a headless setup -- it doesn't need a monitor to print, but unfortunately I occasionally need a monitor to troubleshoot it.

Well, not any more. Now I've got Microsoft's Remote Desktop utility for the Mac, and after typing in the print server's IP address, I was able to easily log on, run programs and reboot the machine, all of which had me laughing manically.

The only drawback to this is that the BIOS on this old Windows machine wants to have a keyboard connected in order to boot. For now I've got the keyboard sitting on top of the box under my desk, but I'll have to work on disabling that requirement. I know there's no way that my two year old can resist the temptation to mess with a keyboard located at her level.

All in all, it was a pretty good day's work, though it's still going to take a few months and a few hundred dollars to get the network exactly where I want it -- I need enough RAM on the iMac to run OS X, then the WiFi G dongle for it, plus another Airport Express unit, but hey, that's a job for another day.