Can I create a private network just for my PC and iPhone?

Question

I have a problem. I just bought a wireless n router. My mediacenter pc and my macbook are both have wireless n. The problem is my iphone 3gs does not support wireless n.

Right now I have my router in mixed mode so all devices play nice. It would be nice to be able to set it to N only for increased performance. If I do this however, my iphone will not be able to join my network. I use my iphone as a mobile mouse and boxee remote for my mediacenter pc very often. This functionality is very important to me.

Is there anyway I can switch my router to wireless n only and still have my iphone and mediacenter pc communicate.

PC is running Windows XP.

Answer 1

You likely won't get any noticeable performance increase by running solely in Wireless-N. Having tried it myself, I couldn't notice a difference. As long as you are using a WPA/2 password, N-Devices should be able to easily reach their max speed. Only when using WEP are devices limited to G speeds.

If you are intent on keeping the router in Wireless-N mode, you can often plug a second router into the first through ethernet, letting it act as an access point with 802.11g enabled.

Answer 2

Quickest method it to purchase a second router Make sure it has a different ip address set eg linksys is 192.168.1.1 and d-link is 192.168.0.1

you can either manually reconfigure the router before hand or just purchase one made by a different company.

Once you have the second router connect a cable from the WAN port on the new router to 1 of the 4 pc connections on the original router.

Computers connected on either router should be able to access and share resources between them

Answer 3

If you router is set to 'N only', you'd need a second wireless router (or access point) operating at 'G' (or 'B') speed which the iPhone can communicate with.

Alternatively, you could add a G/B wireless network card to your MediaCenter PC which could communicate with the iPhone.

Answer 4

It could be possible to do this. A wireless interface could be used in ad-hoc mode to create a WiFi-G network between the MediaCenter and the iPhone.

However, if your MediaCenter only has a single WiFi interface, it cannot network to both the iPhone (in ad-hoc mode) and the WiFi-N router at the same time.

If you really wanted to do this, add a second WiFi interface (eg, via USB or similar) to your MediaCenter, and set that up as an ad-hoc WiFi-G network. Watch out for interference issues and such.

Personally, I'd keep the router in mixed-mode.