[Pu01000101TaNg]

First off im new to this site, and i didnt know were to post a networking question. my Q is. can a wireless adapter be plugged into a switch and use all the ports. my wireless router is downstairs like 50ft away and i cant really run cables. so i was woundering if i could connect it wirelessly to a adapter and then run a ethernet cable to a 8port switch so i could have more than one port in my room.

 

[ComGuards]

You need to use a Wireless Bridge. For reference, a "bridge" can be used to connect to networks of dissimilar media, i.e. ethernet & wireless.

Dedicated wireless bridge devices aren't generally worth the money though. What you can do is get a router that's compatible with 3rd-party firmware, say DD-WRT (www.dd-wrt.com) or Tomato (www.polarcloud.com/tomato), and flash the router's firmware so that it can be reconfigured as a wireless bridge.

Basically you're using 3rd-party firmware to reconfigure a router to function as a wireless bridge.

 

[the_beast]

Some access points can do what you want out of the box - I have a couple of D-Link 2000AP+ (IIRC - been a while since I used them) that will work as a bridge or as a client to another 2000AP+. With a bit of messing about you can also get them to work as a client to other access points too - but this generally involves dropping a lot of the security features you really want to be using nowadays - like sacrificing WPA2 and dropping down to WEP...

ComGuards suggestion is the best one - although I don't use it like that, I have managed to get my flashed WL-HDD to act as a client to a Netgear wireless router. Check the OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato wikis for some compatible hardware and see what you can eBay for a few pennies...