im on telewest, and use one of those USB surfboard modems. How do i setup a wireless net with my laptop. i know the lappy needs a PCMCIA card but what about on the PC side? 
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If you want to connect your internet to your laptop via wireless, you're best getting one of these new "all-in-one" boxes which do:
NAT routing (to share the connection to your network)
Network ethernet switch (so you can use it to hook up your PCs via CAT5 cable)
WAP (wireless access point)
The just connect to your modem, and do all the work. If you use one of these, you don't need a PC acting as your gateway. Before, you had to buy the components seperately (router, switch, wap) and it was very expensive. The price for a home wireless LAN has fallen drastically now though, and it's far simpler with an integrated solution.
This one seems good, although I haven't used it myself.
Just plug it into your modem, plug a computer into it to configure the ip address (software is normally included), and that's it. This model even has an internal firewall which is a bonus (although it's probably pretty basic as hardware firewalls cost a lot).
The only other thing you would need after getting one of these is a wireless NIC for your laptop. Always buy the same brand WAP and NIC. Even though wireless LAN is classed as a standard technology now, I've seen issues with mismatched kit in the past even though they are all supposed to be 802.11.
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