Easily connect old Macs to WiFi with a range extender

[jrwil]

Here's a shoutout to one of my favorite pieces of modern gear that makes it super easy to connect a vintage Mac — and anything else — to your home WiFi.

The Netgear N300 range extender is a very small, full-fledged router that includes an Ethernet jack on the bottom to connect a wired device. This makes it super convenient to set up machines in any room.

I've used one with my SE/30 and Power Mac 6500 with no additional settings tweaks on the N300 itself. Older versions of the firmware for this device, available from Netgear, allow greater control to input MAC addresses if needed.

They're about $30 used on Amazon or eBay. I think they're even on the shelf at Best Buy. This model connects to 2.4GHz networks only.

Plug a basic switch into it for even more devices!

Cheers.

 

[olePigeon]

I use the older version of that product.  It doesn't have the external antennas.  I like the small, black one because it has the same contours as my G3 PowerBook.  Looks like it was purpose-built for it.

 

[Gorgonops]

I was looking at those the other day as a possible solution to extend the network to an Ethernet-equipped printer, but ended up going with a powerline-based solution because I found it surprisingly difficult to find a clear answer to a simple question: is the Ethernet port on these things *bridged* to the wireless network, IE, if you hang a hub off this and connect a couple wired clients will they get IP addresses from the DHCP pool handled by the main router and see broadcast traffic (bonjour, etc), or is everything connected to the ethernet port NAT-ed to the IP given to the extender?

 

[techknight]

I had one of those at my house plugged into the wall when I moved in, it was repeating the signal from the cabin next door. I hated that thing, constantly crapped out. Got rid of it. 

 

[jrwil]

I was looking at those the other day as a possible solution to extend the network to an Ethernet-equipped printer, but ended up going with a powerline-based solution because I found it surprisingly difficult to find a clear answer to a simple question: is the Ethernet port on these things *bridged* to the wireless network, IE, if you hang a hub off this and connect a couple wired clients will they get IP addresses from the DHCP pool handled by the main router and see broadcast traffic (bonjour, etc), or is everything connected to the ethernet port NAT-ed to the IP given to the extender?

In my experience, the primary router assigns the IP address. Devices connected to the N300 appear as wirelessly connected devices in my primary router. I haven't had any issues reaching N300-connected devices from machines connected to the primary router.