In a message dated 5/27/2008 11:47:54 P.M. Central Daylight Time, vacogen@mv-worknot.com writes: Using Sprint air card and Linksys wireless G router. How do you connect the air card to the router? I have a Linksys G but it does not have a usb port. Are adapters available? Where? Jack Miller KK42024 Mystic Knights of the Sea **************Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with Tyler Florence" on AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)

This is a special router - WRT54G3G-ST. All-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and Wireless-G (802.11g) Access Point ***Standard PC Card slot for a Mobile Broadband Data Card*** High security: Wi-Fi Protected AccessT (WPA/WPA2 Personal), wireless MAC address filtering, powerful SPI firewall Ron Rogers

> This is a special router - WRT54G3G-ST. > > All-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and > Wireless-G (802.11g) > Access Point > These aircard-to-802.11 routers are interesting devices. If you're going to connect MULTIPLE computers across your cellular data plan and want to easily make voice calls at the same time, I can see their value. But remember that you'll need another cellular data plan, a cellular aircard, and the special router. That's an expensive way to go. And there are other options. I'm a big fan of using the single mobile phone for everything. That way, once you amplify it (and you'll eventually want to amplify it on your boat), you get the amplifier for voice and data together. Having it all on the phone means that you can use phone applications themselves to get weather, navigation, tides, currents, web access, etc. It's too big of a benefit. Frankly, it mostly what we use when we're on our boat - rarely booting up the PC - we found that we didn't need to use it nearly as much. So what do you do if you want to share your mobile phone internet connection with multiple computers? Unfortunately, that does happen on our boat (it's unfortunate because we should be enjoying other things than using our computers). Here are a couple of ways to share the connection directly from your mobile phone: 1. Use one of the computers as a gateway. You connect the mobile phone to the PC and use built-in software on the PC to share the connection with other PC's. Here are some articles about how to do it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126 http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_ics/ Both of those articles use Windows XP. There's probably a way to use Vista with ICS too but I haven't looked into it. 2. If you really want to spend extra money, there is at least one device that allows you to connect your mobile phone directly, and then acts as a wireless gateway (much like Ron's referenced WRT54G3G-ST): http://www.cradlepoint.com/ctr350/ctr350.php I plan on experimenting with this device later in the year (it came out since our last cruise). I still think, overwhelmingly, that it is a mistake to use an aircard on a boat. You're either limiting your capabilities or putting yourself in a situation where you need to spend a lot more money to get the same capabilities has having a higher-end mobile phone. The only situation where it might be better to use an aircard is when your company is paying for it and you can use it on your boat for free. ================================== Jeffrey Siegel M/V aCappella DeFever 53PH W1ACA/WDB4350 Castine, Maine www.activecaptain.com Content, Communications, Community ..