Hi folks,I have a problem that I've been fighting for weeks, and am trying to figure out a way around it. Briefly, I have two PCs more or less dedicated to flight simming/gaming. They are in my basement,and running Cat5 cable from my internet gateway box to the basement would be difficult/painful. The internet gateway (a 2Wire Home Portal box) has a wireless 802.11b capability but the basement PCs, due to distance and walls, have a hard time getting a reliable connection via wireless. So I tried HPNA (phone line networking), since the Home Portal has that built-in, and ONE of the PCs (an HP Pavilion 2.7gHz Celeron box) works fine with it. The problem is, my brand spanking new Dell Dimension 8400 w/WinXP Home SP2, which is intended to be my "flagship" FS2004 platform, has a problem with HPNA, such that my connection is dropped at unpredictable intervals (anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more) - there goes my ActiveSky connection!I have tried so many things to troubleshoot/address this that I probably can't remember them all, but suffice it to say that I've given up on HPNA and am looking at alternatives. (My suspicion is that WinXP SP2 has hosed up something, since the Dell is the only box I have that's running it. It was factory-installed and I am loathe to try to re-install a non-SP2 WinXP.)My latest idea is to somehow connect the errant Dell machine to the HP machine (which has a solid network connection) via the two machine's built-in NICs, and somehow share the HP's network connection. Some research says that Internet Connection Sharing might be the answer, but a friend told me that it "sucks" and is slow and maybe unreliable.Does anyone have a suggestion on how to get the Dell hooked up to my network that is roughly 10mbps and reliable, given my situation?I was going to take the Power Line Networking route, but that's expensive for two nodes ($150 or more) and I'm trying not to do that.Thanks for any suggestions/insight.Dave Blevins

Have you looked at some of the signal boosters for wireless systems. I run wired and I know the pain of pulling the Cat5 through three attics but it was worth it in the end. Wireless was just starting in Jan 01 and was too expensive.It is hard to find wire products these days at the local computer retailers. They have wireless everywhere.W. Sieffert

re: signal boosters - AAMOF just yesterday I was looking at them. The problem is that the ones I've seen only boost certain WAPs by the same mfr, or at least that's what the documentation says.My 2Wire Home Portal is fairly unique in that its antennas are internal, and there is no external antenna connection - so the big antennas (I actually have one from an old WAP) don't work.I mistakenly bought a WAP last night, not knowing the difference between that and a wireless *bridge* which is what I should've bought. I'm off this morning to exchange the WAP for a bridge - we'll see how that goes.Thanks for the reply,dB.

Dave,For the cost of a CAT5 crossover cable I think I would try ICS first, if you really need the Dell to have internet connection. After all ICS is built into WinXP and is free.If you run FS on the Dell and run AS and other 'add-on' programs on the Pavilion you can network the two and use registered versions of FSUIPC and Widefs to allow AS etc to 'talk' to FS on the Dell.However if you fly in multiplayer sessions with buddies (as opposed to VATSIM and the like) then the Dell will need an Internet connection.Rgds

Thanks for all the feedback. I elected not to go the ICS route, and my new LinkSys wireless bridge seems to be working well (although I've only had it running for an hour or so).I'm not multiplaying these days, but I *am* running FSFlightMax, PM's Regional Jet displays, and occasionally other things on the 2nd machine via WideFS and FSUIPC.I'm currently just leaving ActiveSky on the Dell (which is running FS), as I haven't seen much of a performance impact with AS. cheers guys,dB.