laptop with WIFI

[legend_018]

I am going to be working from home soon and my work is giving me a laptop with WIFI. AT home, I will be setting up a Linksys WAP45G to my switch so I can have a wireless Access Point in my house. This way, I can use the laptop to make the vpn connection to my work.
However, I'll be on call on weekends and I don't want to stay home all the time ; ). So for example: My dad lives in a 50+ town house village and he uses AOL dial up. If I'm at his house, how can I access the internet from my laptop?
I have a funny feeling the WIFI card in the laptop won't do me any good at his house and many other peoples houses. : (

[glc]

You will have to connect your internal modem to his phone line and use a dialup account. You may want to negotiate with your dad to get broadband - you should be able to get that for the same price as that overpriced AOL dialup account.

You do know that a WAP54G is only an access point - you will need a router too?

Tip - most Panera Bread stores have free wifi........

[legend_018]

I have a cable modem that hooks into a smoothwall machine "basically an old machine turned into a Linux Based Firewall" which has 2 network cards so the 2nd network cards connects to my switch. Than my other computers "xp home" also connect to the switch. The smoothwall machine is also the dhcp server for giving the other machines ip addresses. So I hope WAP54G is correct. That was suggested to me in an earlier forum

My dad switched because it's cheaper for him to have the dial up.

[glc]

Yes, the WAP54G is what you need in that case.