bluetooth broadband

[romano]

if one has broadband at home connected to a pc and a second person wanted to use a laptop to connect to the web possibly via bluetooth, what problems will I face?

[j2buttonsw]

The bluetooth enabled laptop would normally connect to the internet via a bluetooth enable mobile phone not broadband. If you wanted to share the broadband you would need to network the laptop with the broadbanded PC and use internet connection sharing or an equivalent. Presumably you could add a USB bluetooth adapter to the broadbanded PC and network with the bluetoothed laptop but I am not sure whether ICS would work (is bluetooth a TCP/IP based network? I am not sure). It would be easier to network the PC and laptop with a cross-over CAT5 cable (the laptop will undoubtably have a NIC but you may need to add one to your broadbanded PC). It would also be a much quicker connection that is designed to work with ICS.

[lisaj]

Forget Bluetooth and get a 802.11g 54Mbps wireless solution. It'll cost the same, if not less, and will give you 54 times the 1Mbps speed of Bluetooth, not to mention Bluetooth's range being only 10 feet and 802.11's about 300ft. You'll need two wireless cards, and Netgear currently do a Access Point/Card combo starter pack for �95. Source from Dabs or Insight.

[romano]

woah there, slow down....a: does it matter if the broadband conection to pc is in a garage 30m away from house? sounds like it does. And I have no idea what an 54mps is?

[j2buttonsw]

Erm, Bluetooth has a relativly short range depending on what power class it is, typically 10-30 feet (3-10 m) see: http://www.blueunplugged.com/guide/whatistherange.
asp And it is also restricted to a bandwidth of 1 Mbps (1 mega bits per second). The new wireless LAN standard aka 802.11 (see http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/ ) has a much higher bandwidth of 54 mega bits per second and a greater range of 300 feet (100 m). Using a CAT5 cable you can run a length up to 300 feet (100 m) but it has a bandwidth of up to 1000 mega bits per second. The CAT5 cable is the cheapest and the fastest but is the most unsightly (you will have to run the cable to the garage). If I wanted a wireless solution (as Bluetooth is), I would go with lisaj's 802.11 suggestion (however costly).