| How to Set Up a Wireless Home Network | ||
| There are a few different setup scenarios for wireless home networks, depending on whether you already have a modem and a wired router. In this step-by-step tutorial we'll assume that you already have a broadband connection with a cable or DSL modem but don't yet have a router, and that your computer is currently plugged directly into your modem. We will also assume you want to keep a desktop PC wired to the network and to set up either a notebook or a second desktop PC for wireless access. (It's a good idea to keep one of your PCs wired during configuration, in case security settings are lost in the process and you can't get back on the network.) You'll need to buy a wireless router, a wireless PCI card for your desktop PC, and a wireless PCMCIA card (also known as a PC Card) for your notebook. | ||
1. Connect Your Wireless Router
a. Turn off your cable modem and your wired PC.
b. Unplug the Ethernet cable from your cable modem and plug it into one of the four LAN ports on the back of the wireless router. The other end of the cable should remain connected to your PC.
c. Connect a second Ethernet cable between your modem's Ethernet port and the wireless router's WAN port. (The WAN port is separate from the four grouped LAN ports.)
d. Turn on the modem and wait for the status lights to indicate that it's connected to your service provider. This may take up to a minute.
e. Plug in the router. The status lights will blink as it goes through its own diagnostics; this may also take up to a minute.
f. Boot up your wired PC.
How to Set Up a Wireless Home Network
2. Configure Your Router
a. Refer to the router's printed quick-start guide, launch your Web browser, and type in the address indicated in the guide.
b. Follow the on-screen setup wizard, which should guide you step by step through the process.
c. Enable your router's security functions. The options will be WEP and WPA. (See page 88 for more information on enabling WPA.) Both will ask you to enter a key. Depending on your router's manufacturer, you may need to go to Advanced Settings to handle this step and the next two.
d. Change the default administrator's password, which is often known to hackers.
e. Change the SSID—the name you give your wireless network. Again, hackers know many of the default SSIDs and can use them to join your network.
How to Set Up a Wireless Home Network
3. Install a Wireless PCI Card in a Desktop PC
a. Refer to the card manufacturer's quick-start guide. If necessary, run the software installation program.
b. Shut down the PC.
c. Remove the cover.
d. Locate an available PCI slot and remove the corresponding slot cover from the back of the PC.
e. Carefully route the antenna through the open slot in the back of the PC, insert the card in the slot, and secure it. Replace the cover.
f. Power up the PC. It should recognize and enable the new hardware.
g. Go to the Control Panel, select Network, select Wireless Networking connection. Click on Properties. Click on Wireless Networking tab. Select the wireless networking name (see step 2e above). Click on Configure. Adjust your security settings to match those on your wireless router.
| How to Set Up a Wireless Home Network | |||
| 4. Install a Wireless PC Card in a Notebook PC Many notebooks have built-in wireless cards. If yours doesn't, follow these instructions. a. Follow steps "a" and "b" in number 3. b. Plug your wireless PC Card into an available slot on the side of your notebook. c. Follow steps "f" and "g" in number 3 | |||
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| For the price of a new multihundred-disc CD changer, you can stream hundreds or even thousands of CDs wirelessly from your PC to your home audio system, using a digital media hub, also called a digital media receiver, digital media adapter, or entertainment hub. Some such devices can also show digital photos and, in one case, video. Prices range from $100 to $300. A media hub sits near your audio amplifier. It's easy to set up: You plug it into a set of unused input jacks and control it using a supplied remote, viewing content on your TV set. The hub looks like a home-networking switch or router and receives wireless Ethernet signals. Client software installed on your PC receives requests and sends out the files via wireless Ethernet, typically still compressed in MP3 or WMA format to save on the network overhead. If you have playlists set up on your PC, the hub can use them. This beats pressing the All Discs–Shuffle button on a CD player. Most media hubs have wired Ethernet capability as well as wireless. But for the most part, even with 802.11b, there is enough bandwidth and memory buffering to keep the music playing uninterruptedly. | |||
| The Swiss Army media player of the bunch is the Prismiq MediaPlayer ($249.95 direct), which transfers music, photos, and PC-based MPEG video. With a $50 wireless keyboard, it also lets you browse the Web and instant-message from your TV set. The base unit comes with a PC Card slot; just add an 802.11b or 802.11g wireless card for $25 to $100. While the Prismiq unit does more than the others, it's also more daunting to set up than the Linksys and HP hubs. | |||
| The price/performance leader is the Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter ($200 street). Besides transferring music, it displays photos on your TV set. The remote is well labeled. The only knock is minor: Support for album art is not available with this first version. | |||
| Unwire Your Office 10.14.03 | |
| Lifespan, a Providence-based health network, has found great value in instant, untethered access to information that can be used anywhere, anytime to support group decisions—whether it's a matter of life and death or not. The company manages patient-care and administrative services at four Rhode Island hospitals. And wireless technology has brought greater mobility to both its medical front line and its back office, says David Hemendinger, Lifespan's chief technology officer. Taking advantage of their wireless LAN, staffers can use laptops, PDAs, and even custom-built mobile workstations to view patient records and issue care instructions from any of the hospital's 1,167 bedsides, a capability that will soon extend to the hospital's operating rooms as well. While wireless LAN technology certainly reduces paperwork and saves time, the biggest advantage for Lifespan may be enabling what Hemendinger calls "productivity cells," ad hoc decision-making conferences that can be convened anywhere to take advantage of up-to-the-minute data, whether on the clinical or the business side. The company's wireless LAN success depends heavily on technical measures that provide data security, flexible network management, and seamless integration with the wired network, Hemendinger explains. Perhaps equally important is the care taken to be sure mobile applications actually make users more effective. "We're not just interested in putting access points in the ceiling," he says. "We're interested in changing business processes to take advantage of new capabilities that mobility provides." | |
| Unwire Your Office | |
| The Biz World Goes Wireless Corporations everywhere are finding compelling reasons for deploying wireless networks as part of their IT infrastructures. The largest benefit, as Lifespan and others have found, is improved employee productivity. With access to corporate data, e-mail, IM, and the Internet, workers can stay productive and available even while mired in meetings and away from their office desktops. This improved accessibility also promotes more collaboration. There's the cost-savings factor too. Most new corporate-class notebooks have built-in wireless adapters, and wireless cards for older notebooks cost as little as $30 each. And in a new office space, it can be thousands of dollars cheaper to network clients with wireless than to install wiring in every office and cubicle. Employees who have experienced the benefits of wireless networking at home are also demanding it at work. If the company doesn't respond, some will even plug their own sub-$100 access points into the corporate network and create an ad hoc departmental wireless network. This might be convenient, but such rogue APs can create a huge security breach. IT managers who have to deploy corporate wireless networks face significant challenges that are different from those associated with wired networks or even home wireless networks. Of course, security is probably the first concern. But managers also have to worry about which technology to choose, where they need to provide coverage, and how to monitor performance. Finally, the networks have to be reliable, scalable, and manageable. | |
| Unwire Your Office | |
| "A," "B," or "G"? One of the major challenges of deploying a corporate wireless network is choosing the right technology. With the ratification in June of the IEEE 802.11g standard, a third choice of technology became viable for business use. As we've discussed previously, "g" products operate in the same 2.4-GHz band as the earlier 802.11b products but at a significantly higher data rate—up to 54 Mbps, as compared with 11 Mbps for "b" products. The "g" standard also provides that "b" and "g" products must interoperate using their different modulation techniques, yet not interfere with each other. Simply stated, 802.11g products are backward-compatible and interoperable with 802.11b products. That's good news for organizations already heavily invested in "b" technology, because they can gradually add "g" products to the mix. Companies that do mix these technologies should note that when the two types share a network, the performance of "g" products can be reduced to that of "b" products. New technologies now available in current "g" products based on chipsets from Broadcom and Intersil should alleviate this problem (see the definitions of Prism Nitro and Xpress in our glossary). Firmware upgrades are also available from manufacturers of "g" products sold prior to these features' availability. While we did note performance improvement in testing products with the technologies on-board—twice the throughput in mixed mode—we did not see the amount of improvement suggested by the chipset manufacturers. The third technology, 802.11a, has data rates up to 54 Mbps, just like 802.11g. While 802.11b/g products generally have better range than 802.11a products, only 3 nonoverlapping channels are available to them in the 2.4-GHz spectrum. 802.11a, which is in the 5-GHz spectrum, has about 12 nonoverlapping channels to choose from; the precise number depends on how the manufacturer divides up the spectrum and how its modulation technique varies. A pending FCC ruling could raise the number of channels for "a" products to 24. What this means for a densely crowded office setting is that you can pack more 802.11a APs into a smaller area where a high concentration of clients are in need of good performance, without worrying about signals overlapping and canceling each other out. But remember that 802.11a products tend to have a shorter range, and their radio signals are weakened more by walls and ceilings than products in the 2.4-GHz spectrum. The good news is that multiband APs that support 802.11a/b/g are becoming available. And on the client side, the trend is also toward 802.11a/b/g PC and PCI cards. Chipset manufacturers and analysts say that by this time next year, most wireless networking shipped in corporate notebooks will be "a/b/g." The bottom line: If you're on a tight budget and don't expect that you'll need to accommodate a lot of clients in a small space, 802.11g may do the job for you. If you want to future-proof your network, consider "a/g" access points, which will work with any wireless client. | |
| Unwire Your Office | |
| The Site Survey Early in your planning process, you should arm yourself with a floor plan and perform a site survey of the area you intend to cover, keeping in mind that each AP will need a connection to the wired network and power. Many manufacturers of business-class APs now provide Power over Ethernet (PoE), which uses an extra pair of wire within Category 5 (or better) Ethernet cable to send power to an AP. This can save you the cost of installing electric circuits or outlets. The physical security of the AP must also be considered. Most models are small enough that anyone could unplug one and walk away with it if it's not bolted to the wall. You might even consider installing the AP in a dropped ceiling so it is obscured from sight; just make sure the device and the cabling is "plenum-rated," meaning it is not a fire hazard. Your site survey should also include an analysis of the airwaves. Using your notebook and a shareware program like Network Stumbler (www.netstumbler.com) or a commercial product such as WildPackets' AiroPeek (www.wildpackets.com) or AirMagnet (www.airmagnet.com), determine whether existing wireless networks might interfere with your plans. As you discover other networks, make note of their locations, as well as the channels on which they operate. This will help you design what's called a channel plan, basically a map overlaid with the channels you intend to use on your APs. This is less of a concern with multichanneled 802.11a networks than with 802.11b/g-only networks, which provide only three nonoverlapping channels. By default, most APs ship configured to the same channel; make sure to change the defaults to use all the channels available. If they're all on the same channel, their signals may overlap and create dead zones, canceling out connections. | |
| Unwire Your Office | |
| High-Capacity Issues As you plan the locations for your APs, ask yourself the following: Are you designing your wireless network to cover an area for a few users at any given time, or are you planning for capacity usage, meaning that APs will be carrying a substantial amount of traffic all the time? If you are planning for capacity, you will need more APs than the bare minimum required for connectivity. Each AP will cover a circular area unless you are adding directional antennas to concentrate the focus in one direction. Walls, furniture, cubicles, and other obstacles absorb radio energy and will distort that circular pattern somewhat. Also, it's important to understand that signal strength varies with the inverse square of the distance. For example, in an open field, the signal strength at 80 feet would be 1/4 the signal strength at 40 feet. As the signal gets weaker, the data rate drops, so while 802.11g clients located near an AP might connect with a data rate of 15 to 20 Mbps, clients at the edge of coverage might drop to 1 to 2 Mbps. A connection alone isn't enough; the signal must be strong enough to transfer data adequately for all the connected users. The signal each AP radiates will provide limited coverage to the floors above and below you, though ceilings and floors will weaken the signals—especially if they're made of dense materials like concrete. Still, the signal may be strong enough to provide adequate coverage. Wireless networks, unlike modern switched wired networks, are shared media. As a rule of thumb, you generally don't want more than about 25 clients to associate with each AP. So in a densely populated cube farm, you'd probably want to deploy several APs on nonoverlapping channels. If you have to use the same channel on more than one AP in a given area, make sure the APs are far enough apart that their signals don't cross, or you can reduce their transmitting power. Though this lowers their performance, it also reduces their coverage area and the risk of interference | |
| unwire Your Office | |
| Choosing the Equipment Once you've mapped out your site survey and written your security plan, it's time to make some purchasing decisions—for example, whether you want to buy corporate-class APs or APs more targeted to the home or small-office market. The latter are initially attractive because of their low prices. Typically, an 802.11g home or small-office access point has a street price between $130 and $200, and a dual-band 802.11a/g product is about $300. While these options may be a cost-effective solution for deploying a limited number of APs, they lack features a network administrator might want or need. Corporate-class APs, such as the Cisco AP 1200 series, Proxim Orinoco AP-2000, and 3Com 8700 Access Point, offer centralized management, single- and dual-band options, PoE, and MAC authentication. In addition, such APs often offer multiple security modes. For example, the Orinoco AP-2000 supports both WEP and WPA simultaneously. This makes it easier on your users if in the future you are upgrading their client cards from WEP to WPA or to 802.11i, because you can upgrade them individually over time rather than disrupting everyone at once. Keep in mind that some relatively old wireless products will not support upgrades to WPA compatibility. Using a mix of technologies—for instance, running your older 802.11b APs in the same environment with newer, backward-compatible 802.11g products—can at least give you the flexibility to provide WEP for legacy products pending a hardware upgrade. | |
Download Now: EnterpriseWLANProducts.pdf
As wireless LAN devices proliferate throughout larger companies and organizations, the demands on a wireless network's reliability, availability, and mobility increase exponentially. Between fear of security vulnerabilities and an unwieldy distributed architecture, the early generations of wireless LAN hardware and software have been incapable of handling the current rigors of management. In response, an array of products have come to market with the promise of bringing full control of the large wireless network. Note that the distinctions between categories are already blurring, as manufacturers realize that management and security issues are actually intertwined.
Software management products give you control over your existing access points from a central console, while providing additional monitoring and lockdown capabilities. The products offer centralized key management and security policy distribution, as well as a mechanism for detecting unauthorized radio activity. Centralized channel management and reporting metrics increase radio performance and reliability. Unfortunately, each of these products has limited AP support, so your buying decision will depend on your existing hardware.
Switch-based systems are end-to-end solutions, each combining a centralized aggregation switch with a new generation of "thin" access points, plus embedded software to manage everything. The switch performs roughly the same security functions found in security gateway products, though with tighter integration into the wired network. It also serves as a point of control over the thin APs, letting you automatically deploy and adjust configuration data, radio settings, and security parameters—including coordinated rogue detection—while simultaneously providing Power over Ethernet to the APs.
Security gateways intercept wireless traffic as it passes from the AP to the wired network, forcing authentication to a back-end RADIUS or LDAP server. Integrated Stateful Packet Inspection engines then allow you to create user- and time-based access policies for reaching network services. Using IPsec encryption for privacy, these devices process and hand off sessions between APs seamlessly to increase user mobility and improve reliability as a user walks from one AP's range to another. The products work equally well with your existing 802.11a/b/g APs, but they are only beginning to offer management control of and reporting on the wireless network itself.
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