Wireless networks allow for great mobility around the house and easy access to printers and other resources available on the network. Wireless networks are also prone to snooping from neighbors, and drive by hacker attacks, so security is paramount.
The goal of this guide is to help you set up a simple wireless network with a shared Internet connection, and a few computers. You can add much more onto a wireless network but that is beyond the scope of this guide.
There are a few things you need to acquire before you can about setting up your wireless network. You will need wireless cards for your computers, and a wireless router.
I recommend that you buy your wireless network cards and router in a package so you can be more assured that they all work nicely together.
These three types of wireless networks are the most commonly used standards. 802.11b is the most common and has a good combination of range and a slower speed than the others. If you are building your home network from scratch I would recommend you go with the 802.11g because it is much faster than 802.11b and it has great signal range.
The most important part of installing the wireless router is putting the router in a central position in your house. Try to avoid placing the router near other electrical appliances as they may affect the signal.
When you have plugged in your router to an electrical outlet, you will want to plug the Internet connection into the router. All routers have a port that is labeled Internet or something similar.
Note that you can only hookup a broadband connection to the router unless you have a RS-232 serial port on the router for external dialup modems.
Install the network cards into the computer as detailed in the productâ??s documentation. You will then want to use the software that cam with the network card to install the device. If you bought the network cards and router in a package, you will be able to set this up very easily. If not, consult the devices documentation, and set it up to point to the router.
Once you have everything setup, you will want to set the router up to be more secure. One of the most important things you need to do is set the password for accessing the router's internal settings. Consult your router's documentation on how to do this, as it is different for most routers.
After you have changed the password you will want to enable WEP encryption so people canâ??t intercept the information that is traveling through the air on your network very easily.
Newer routers offer a multitude of encryption levels, but 128bit is the one you want to look for.
To enable WEP, you will need to setup a WEP passkey and the router will then generate a very long number. You will want to setup your network cards to use this WEP passkey. You may need to consult your network card's documentation to do this.
Note: Newer routers offer an encryption called WPA, but it is way too complex for a simple home network. WEP-PSK will work fine for you.
To secure your network even further you can enable a feature most routers have called MAC Address Filtering.
First let's define what a MAC Address is. A MAC Address is an unique identifier that is given to every networking device, you can use this identifier to make sure only certain computers are present on your network.
To enable this you will want to use the software that came with your network card to determine what the MAC Address of your computer is, note it, and then go to the router configuration software and copy that number into the allowed MAC Address list. You may need to consult your router and network card's documentation to find out how to accomplish this.
Why is this useful? It is useful because if the MAC address is not on the list, the computer is not allowed to access the network.
If you need help or have any questions at all, please post in our friendly forums. You will likely get an answer more quickly than you would muddling through the settings and trial and error.