Using WiFi and WiMax in my New Office, Less Clutter, Fast Speed

The Challenge
Last month I moved into a new office in Tualatin and decided to start looking for an Internet connection. Several choices were considered:

  1. Pay $65.00 / month to the landlord
  2. Borrow another tenant WiFi connection
  3. Try out WiMAX, $45.00 /month

WiMAX
From the blog title you can infer that I choose option #3, try out WiMax. I’ve been reading about WiMax for years and knew that I could benefit from the fast data rates. At first I just connected my Clear WiMAX modem directly into my MacBook Pro laptop however I didn’t like the looks of the modem sticking out the side of my laptop, instead I wanted to try WiFi.

Wireless Router
Researching a bit I found a company called Cradlepoint that offered a Wireless Router that I could plug my WiMAX modem into and it would create a WiFi hotspot. The added bonus was that I could also plug in my HP network printer into the Wireless Router. Here’s what I ended up with:

Conclusion
So now I have nothing plugged into my laptop and I can connect to the Internet with WiFi and print documents without any USB cable strung across the floor.
I still need to follow up with Cradlepoint and ask about the bandwidth of their Wireless Router because I’m about 2X slower on downloads with the Wireless Router compared to WiMAX plugged directly into my laptop. Perhaps I will learn about some speed settings that can be tweaked.

Leave a Reply