1:31 PM

An Open Source Wi-Fi Roundup:

The general belief when it comes to setting up Wi-Fi connectivity is that you need a Wireless access point (AP) device and computers with wireless client cards. This site has reviewed dozen of consumer and business oriented APs, some better than others. One thing always remains the same, however: the access point always costs more than the wireless card.

Guess what? You don’t always necessarily need a fixed wireless router device to create your own WLAN. You can do it with two machines that both have Wi-Fi cards, and leave more expensive APs out of the picture.

There are a number of different ways to accomplish this with freely available GNU/Linux based open source software. A typical Linux distribution will generally allow you set up a Linux box as a ‘wired’ router, so turning it into a wireless router isn’t really that big a leap.

For instance, if you have a desktop machine in your home office, and want to create a WLAN for the notebook that you or other family members use in the rest of the house (or to create an AP for a console gaming platform like Xbox or PlayStation2), all you may need is two Wi-Fi cards.