Ask The Geek

Going wireless: No strings to hold you down

By Kevin McDonald

Let's take a little time today to discuss wireless networking. Wireless networking is not as mysterious as you might believe, but it's commonly misunderstood.

Consider the following scenario. These are the most common components that a home-based wireless network will have:

• A broadband Internet connection such as cable or DSL
• One computer that will be "wired" to the network using an Ethernet cable
• One laptop that will connect to the network using the wireless radio signal from a wireless router

It would also behoove us to get a little vocabulary housekeeping out of the way before continuing:

A "network" can be as few as two devices — a computer and a laptop, for example — that communicate in a way that allows them to share information and many other types of resources.

For purposes of this week's scenario, a "wireless router" is a device that allows several network devices (computers, laptops, some printers, etc.) to communicate with each other either over an Ethernet cable or over a wireless radio frequency. Your wireless router is what makes the wireless network possible.

"IP addresses" are special numbers that identify a device on a modern computer network.

These addresses allow the devices to communicate with each other directly and efficiently. Each device must have its own, unique IP address.

Your wireless router is the central component of your network.

In our scenario, we'll plug an Ethernet cable from a DSL modem directly into the wireless router, into a special port labeled "Internet." (Your port may be labeled "WAN.")

Now, instead of your Internet connection going straight into one computer, it's going to make its first stop at your wireless router.

The router connects itself to the Internet, then shares your Internet connection with each of the devices that you will attach to the router.

We'll now use another Ethernet cable to plug the computer directly into the wireless router. Most wireless routers have at least four additional "ports" to attach wired computers.

The router will assign the computer an IP address. This is another essential function of your wireless router.

It must keep track of the IP address it has assigned to each device connected to the network, since each address must be unique.

Finally, we'll turn on the laptop. If the laptop came with a built-in wireless network device, it should already have some kind of software installed to detect and connect to wireless networks.

Otherwise, install a wireless network card in the laptop and install the software that came with it.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 contains a great built-in tool that works with any wireless network device that your computer recognizes, although it may be turned off by other third-party software that came with your wireless device.

As long as you're within range of your wireless router, your laptop should detect the new wireless network, connect to it and get its own unique IP address.

Now you've got two computers sharing your broadband Internet connection. Your wireless router can probably handle many devices connected at once, so you have room to expand.

Don't stop here, though!

Consult your wireless router's documentation to learn how to change the default administrative password on the router.

Otherwise, anyone who wishes to "hack" into your network already knows what the password will be.

Also, learn how to configure your wireless network to be encrypted so that the kid next door doesn't leech your broadband connection!

Kevin McDonald: Writer and professional computer/network administrator. He lives in Amarillo with his wife and children, and owns and operates Definition Computers (806-236-9615). E-mail Kevin at askthegeek@definitioncomputers.com with questions you'd like to see answered in this column.

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Posted: May 1, 2008