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Wireless technology is great. In my humble opinion, wireless networking marks a big step towards the convergence of IT and consumer electronics devices. Being able to network devices without the need for cabling is a major boon for both home and small business users.

Although most large office buildings are flood wired and network ready, anyone setting up a small business is unlikely to have such amenities. Also, most small businesses don’t want to go to the hassle of wiring up an office since they could be moving on to new premises if the business takes off.

But where wireless networking is even more attractive is in the home. Let’s face it, no one really wants CAT5 cable running all over the house, so a wireless setup is an ideal solution.

With broadband becoming common place today, it’s easy to share an Internet connection with multiple PCs and other devices. The easiest way to do this is to install a router. A router will connect to your broadband service, thus allowing your computers can connect to the router via Ethernet. The next step up from here is a wireless router, which allows your computers to connect via Ethernet or wirelessly. This is great if you want to connect PCs in a different room from the router and don’t want wires running everywhere.

It’s simple to equip a PC with wireless functionality. You can use a PCI card, a PC Card if it’s a notebook or even a USB wireless adapter. But what happens if you want to connect a device other than a computer to your wireless network?

Let’s take games consoles for example. Both the Xbox and the PS2 can be connected to the Internet via an Ethernet adapter. The Xbox has an Ethernet port as standard and the PS2 can have one attached. Now it’s fine if you happen to have your games consoles in the same room as your broadband connection, but this is rarely the case. Most people, myself included, will have their games consoles in their living room and their broadband in their bedroom or study where the PCs are.

So, you’ve got a PS2 and you want to play online, but you don’t want to drag a 50 metre CAT5 cable around the house. The answer is a simple one, what you need is a wireless bridge.

A wireless bridge is a device that can connect a standard Ethernet device to a wireless network seamlessly. One such device is the Netgear ME101 and I have to say that it works like an absolute dream.