By Marc Alexander

Networking a home or office used to be a messy affair. You had to contend with wires and cables running along walls, through walls, and sometimes even across the floor. Wireless networking was a viable idea, but when it was new, it was very expensive, and oftentimes wireless adapters came in different standards.

These days, most wireless computer adapters conform to the same standards, or can at least support several standards for best interoperability. What’s best is that they’re cheap. Most of the time, when you buy a new notebook or netbook computer, these would have wireless chips built-in. For desktop computers, meanwhile, you can easily add a wireless adapter through USB.

Wireless adapters are fairly easy to use. In most cases, these are plug and play. However,  that is often the case if there is already an existing wireless infrastructure. For instance, you’re in a WiFi enabled café, or your office floor has Wifi, then connecting would be a snap. But if you’re just starting out with connecting your home or office using wireless networking, then it might be trickier.

Setting up the infrastructure. Most of the time, when you’re setting up your home wireless network, you would be connecting both internally, and to the outside world. The latter would usually be either via cable, DSL, or other types of internet service provider. Most broadband providers interface with your equipment using a LAN cable (UTP CAT-5 or CAT-6 ending in an RJ-45 plug). IF you’re setting up a wireless network, instead of the LAN interface plugging in directly to your computer’s RJ-45 slot, you would need a wireless router. Assuming your wireless router is already powered, simply plug in the DSL or cable modem’s LAN cable to the corresponding slot on the router.

You would then need to set up wireless networking. Set up a name for your network, and to make sure you don’t get eavesdroppers or freeloaders on your network, set up security. WPA is strong enough for home and small office needs.

Setting up the router. You would then have to set up your router to connect or dial up to the network, depending on the type. If it’s DSL, your router should connect via PPP over Ethernet, and you will need a username and password supplied by your ISP. If it’s cable internet, you might need an IP address if your cable provider uses static IP. Otherwise, it’s just plug and play.

Installing the adapters. Most laptops have built-in wireless adapters. It’s just a matter of switching these on. Some have hardware switches, while with most, you will have to enable the adaptor from the network preferences. If you’re using an external adaoptor, such as a USB plug-in WiFi adaptor, then you will need to plug this in, and install drivers that come with the sales package.

Connecting to the network. Assuming your network adaptor is correctly installed and switched on, the operating system should automatically search for available networks. Select the name of the network you had set up on your router, and if asked for the network key, enter the password you used. The router should automatically connect to the internet.

With the correct setup, you should now be able to connect your computers wirelessly, each sharing your internet connection through the router.

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