wireless networking

I use an old 800 mhz /512 ram box that i built years ago. It has 2 120 gb drives, printer etc all shared using windows file sharing. I backup to the drives, print from it, and found it to be the cheapest solution so far. GL

as for the hardware daisy chaining, the only way i can see this is if theres an operating system(firmware) controlling hardware requests for each device, and having a communication language allowing them to communicate with each other. that means, they'll need to understand what each device is asking from them as a request is sent along from one device to the other. network printers are available from HP (to think of one). you can plug them to your router allowing them to be shared on a network. you can also connect that harddrive onto a router port if its a network harddrive. as for the 2 routers connected to 1 pc, youll need 2 NICs to do such thing as i imagine; one for the internet, and the other for the network. why not get a router with enough ports to handle all of this; or you can daisy chain a router. just make sure before you purchase the routers, they're capable of daisy chaining. "UPLINK" is the name of the port to daisy-chain on a Linksys router.

i would have 1 router do do all these things. from what i understand, you dont want the interent service used by the other mate? you can setup the router to allow all port 80 sends and recieves to go to your computer's IP address. that'll prevent your mate from accessing your internet connection.

You can daisy chain usb devices, but not like firewire... I believe you'll need an USB hub for that (unlike fw), not sure.

Anyway, about what you asked... the best way is probably to buy a server. For printers, there are plenty of them, and they're cheap, too. I have one that works flawlessly... very convenient to print from your bedroom to the office room. Another thing is logical, but I will remind you anyway: you don't need to buy everything wireless... everything else (not the NB) stay connected to the router. It's even (on theory) more stable.

For HDDs, Linksys has a NAS solution. It's very cheap (compared to true NAS devices), at about $80, with two USB 2.0 ports, thus allowing up to two HDDs. Its name is 'NSLU2' or something like this. You'll have to buy two enclosures, but they are also very cheap, even the good ones.

A complete home network solution, with wireless router, print server and NAS with 500 GB of networked space will cost you something like $300-350. Somewhat fair, for the amenities you get.

I never researched about devices other than printer/hdd... so I can't comment.