Normally, I don’t delve much into the land of networking because it’s a large and confusing topic. However, I recently got a laptop with a wireless card in it. On a trip to an office supply store, we picked up a wireless access point (WAP), which means that now I can wander around with my laptop and talk to our network and surf the Internet over our satellite connection. I know a lot of people have had wireless networks for years, but for me, this whole new wireless scene is incredibly technologically advanced.
The good news is that adding the WAP into our network wasn’t difficult. We bought a Linksys Wireless G access point. This unit works with 802.11g wireless and the older 802.11b standard. The bottom line is that you need to get an access point that works with the wireless card in the computer. (If you don’t know, check before you buy; the numbers and acronyms used in the wireless world are hugely confusing.)
After I plugged the new WAP into our Ethernet hub, I put the setup CD into the laptop’s CD drive and ran the wizard. Assuming the WAP is plugged in correctly and works, the wizard finds the access point and shows its status. You have to enter a default access password to set it up and then set IP addresses, much like you do when you run the network setup wizard in Windows XP.
The wizard also lets you set encryption options. Needless to say, I think setting this security stuff is a good idea. After going through the wizard, I then had to tell the laptop that we now had a wireless network. So I right-clicked on the connection icon in the Task bar and clicked View Wireless Connections. Windows found the wireless network and suddenly the laptop was connected without wires.
The process was easy, but there is one lingering detail that a lot of people forget to do. When you go through the wizard, you are forced to enter the default access password for the WAP. It’s a very good idea to go back and change this password. To do so, you need to open your browser and type in the IP address of the WAP (something like http://192.168.1.xxx) to access its configuration screens. Go to the option to change the password and type in a different password, so other wireless-enabled folks can’t wander into your network and take it over.