Well, my roommate (well, father, but) decided 'lets switch to wireless G, cords suck' so we go to frys, and look at the routers, im telling him 'linksys or D-link, i havent heard of those others' and then some random guys like 'oh, airlinks a great company, blah blah, we end up buying 1 Airlink AR420W Wireless 'super g' Router, and 3 Airlink Wireless Super G PCI-cards. well, get home, i start setting it up.. use my laptop hard wired into the router to configure it, everything seems fine, set it to Super G mode, setup a password etc (that may be the downfall, but) and well, first the PCI card just -does not- want to fit into my comp, and after 30 minutes of poking and jiggling it goes in tight, hook it all up... first run... my comps running technically 'fine' 700+megs free ram, 10% processor power used... but I cannot do anything... well. Its hanging... like you wouldnt beleive... maybe 5 frames a minute... yet... disable wireless and it works fine... so i waltz into my fathers room, his comps running fine... he loads WoW up, and freezes before he can even connect... soundloop, no mouse response <--really frozen--> he restarts, a bit angry, tries again, same problem... disable wireless, comp runs fine

so, with that out of the way, the questions are:

Port Forwarding!! What I'd assume many to think as the solution upon reading my problem.... herein lies my question... how and why... I understand the basics, ipconfig in cmd see my ip adresses and forward WoW's ports to both comps but... can I? And with the built in firewall OFF... and the other security DISABLED, why would port forwarding be a problem in the first place? Im a networking noob, so shoot me. (when i say can i, wouldnt there be a conflict with forwarding the same ports to multiple computers? and what would happen if i forward port range [___0] to [9999] ? should I? and,

2)should I ditch the password? My fathers pretty anal about passwords, yet... the most basic type <WEP?> I cant recall what its called... Is really confusing... I put in what the desired password is... <lets say cpusramstorage> and i click generate, and it creates... ENCRYPTED (*********) like, 28 key long strings... about 5 of them i think... er... how does that work? What good does encrypted stuff do for me? and then on the comp side, it asks for the key for the WEP encryption, but... what, i put in cpusramstorage <wouldnt that be easier network gods? huh?> but no, it must be a x digit long string... thaanks...

So.... right now im typing this up using the linksys that i had before <oh no, wireless B THE HORROR! which, btw, works flawlessly... I used it at my last place, and worked fine, my laptop was hooked up wirelessly, no problems.

Ill re-install the Airlink tonight and go through the settings again, but its kinda bad that 2 comps had problems (and my laptop cant even connect, its Wireless B but the encryption we had been using wasnt available for my laptop). especially doing 2 different things... doesnt make sense that my comp would be going anal when its just on the desktop... actually now that i think about it... just let me know if you have questions about my settings, ill plug the router back in, not going to bother with reinstalling PCI wireless cards...

Thanks for your help guys

Air links = HEADACHES

return the thing and get a linksys. you will be much much happier

I don't know a whole lot about Airlinks. I will say if you aren't hosting a service (Web, FTP, etc.) don't port forward.