Hi everyone, I am thinking of setting up a private network. I have 3 laptop's, a PC, and a tablet.
2 of the laptop's and the PC are running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, the other laptop is running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit and the tablet is running android 2.2.

All have wireless and all have bluetooth.

I'm not sure what would be best to use, the wireless or the bluetooth.

All thoughts, comments and idea's will be warmly revieved!

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

I'd go with wireless as Bluetooth is mainly for sharing.

File sharing will be the main goal of the network. Would I see a major difference in speed between bluetooth and wi-fi?

I have both wired and wireless on the same home network and works great. File sharing is a bit of a pain to set up right, but once it's done it works ok.

Bluetooth is not really a LAN technology; its considered a PAN (personal area network).

While I'm sure you can work around this using Bluetooth, its not going to be scalable. For example, in the future you may add additional devices such as a NAS and other non-Bluetooth devices. Also, most importantly, you don't have the same bandwidth as compared to LAN interfaces.

+1 to JorgM... in fact this is the first time I've ever heard of someone consider bluetooth for such as activity.

You say you have wireless, which means you have a wireless router or AP... so I gather you already have a private network? Do you mean you wish to setup file sharing and resource sharing (printers etc)? If so... it's very straight forward.

If you have a few ethernet ports available on your router then you could technically connect the majority of your devices (printers, network attached storage, scanners and so forth) and then access these devices using computers and other devices that are connected to that router wirelessly.

I have a QNAP server and a laser printer connected to my home router. All of the computers in my home are wired and my laptops are wireless. This allows all of my devices to confidently access both the NAS and my printer from any location within the house. I've also mapped some network drives to the devices, the security of which is all configured and managed within the QNAP administration panel that is accessibly via any device on my private network.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.