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Setting up your network...

Getting to know your network hardware.

The wireless network card or WNIC (Wireless Network Interface Card) comes in many flavors. Laptops can have an external PCMCIA card or an internal mini-PCMCIA card. PCs can have an internal PCI card or be wired through their NIC to a wireless access point. You can even get a WNIC in a USB connection.

You might say why would my desktop PC new to be wireless?

It is a great advantage to use a wireless card on a desktop PC. First of all there is no need to run an Ethernet cable to that PC in your basement or up to the third floor bedroom so your kids can do their homework (ha!), or more likely play their MMOG game with their friends.

There are currently 4 main types of 802.11x wireless:

802.11a
802.11b
802.11g
802.11n

802.11a
802.11a is a 54mbps standard that operates in the 5GHz range. It uses a signal that is broadcast on more than one frequency at the same time, making antenna design for this application a little more complicated because you MUST have fairly broad frequency sensitivity for it to work properly. 802.11a never really caught on due to cost. Some wireless cards advertised today say they accept the 802.11a signal, but almost no mainstream Access Points (AP's) are 802.11a compatible. The AP’s that are 802.11a mostly been superseded by their more common b and g brothers.

802.11b
This is the wireless standard that had the largest user base, as it was the first to mix ease of setup with low cost. This standard operates in the 2.4GHz range and offers up to 11mbps of bandwidth with a strong signal. Offering a longer operational range than 802.11a, 802.11b's operational range varies from 300-500 feet, depending on obstructions and the ground plane you are working in (often the ground reflects radio frequencies from close-to-ground antennae back at the signal source, creating destructive interference and limiting the operational range of the antenna). This standard is only capable of broadcasting on 1 of 11 channels at a time.

802.11g
This is the most popular version of the 802.11x series. 802.11g offers the cost and range of 802.11b with the speed, and in some cases twice the speed, of 802.11a. Operating in the 2.4GHz range, 802.11g often falls just a few feet short of 802.11b on range, due to it utilizing the upper end of the 2.4GHz spectrum, but with an allotted bandwidth of 54mbps in single-channel mode, and up to 108mbps in duplex (2-channel broadcast) or SuperG mode, the range/bandwidth mix is making 802.11g the wireless standard to beat. All wireless cards advertised today as 802.11g compatible are also 802.11b compatible. Some older 802.11g cards were g-only, but these cards haven’t been manufactured in a good while. 802.11g is now the standard for wireless connections.

802.11n
This is the latest version of the 802.11x series. 802.11n is a highly anticipated successor to today's Wi-Fi, promising a huge performance boost. The draft spec promises to deliver data rates up to 180 Mbps, which could make wired home networks unnecessary and should allow high-definition wireless video streaming. The downside to these cards is likely to be your existing wireless equipment. The router you use to day, a/b/g will not afford you this blazing speed. You will connect at the slower 802.11g speed unless you also buy an 802.11n router. AND your wired network will suffer because all the present access points/routers have only 10/100 Ethernet hubs. This means you'll still only have shared bandwidth on your wired network (no switches built in to AP's). As with most things in networking, vendors are selling a variety of 'pre-n' hardware. Most say their cards will be upgradable to what ever the final standard turns out to be. Me I'll wait until the early adopters work out the kinks.

Wireless Router Information

IP Addressing Thumbnail

There are 5 different address classes. You can determine which class any IP address is in by examining the first octet of the IP address.

Class A addresses begin with 1 to 126
Class B addresses begin with 128 to 191
Class C addresses begin with 192 to 223
Class D addresses begin with 224 to 239
Class E addresses begin with 240 to 254

Addresses beginning with 127 decimal, are reserved for loopback and for internal testing on a local machine. [You can test this: you should always be able to ping 127.0.0.1, which points to the PC that issues the ping request]. Class D addresses are reserved for multicasting. Class E addresses are reserved for future use. They should not be used for host addresses.

There are three IP network addresses reserved for private networks. The addresses are:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

They can be used by anyone setting up internal IP networks, such as a lab or home LAN behind a NAT or proxy server or a router. It is always safe to use these because routers on the Internet will never forward packets coming from these addresses. The reserved address all use the default subnet masks below.

Class A - 255.0.0.0
Class B - 255.255.0.0
Class C - 255.255.255.0

Wireless Encryption Thumbnail

WEP: The oldest and least secure data encryption. All wireless gear supports WEP, though, so it’s useful when you need at least some kind of encryption to be compatible with older wireless hardware.

WPA: A more secure upgrade to WEP. Designed so that many older devices which included only WEP can be upgraded to support WPA.

WPA2: A significantly more secure upgrade to either WEP or WPA. Cannot upgrade older hardware to WPA2, but many new wireless devices support WPA2.

VPN: Short for “Virtual Private Networking,” this technology is not specifically a form of wireless network security. But you can use VPN on your wireless technology if you want the highest form of security possible. Wireless routers with VPN technology tend to be among the more expensive options.