Wireless Home Networking

About This Book

If you’re thinking of purchasing a wireless computer network and installing it in your home, this is the book for you. Even if you’ve already purchased the equipment for a wireless network, this book will help you install and config­ure the network. What’s more, this book helps you get the most out of your investment after it’s up and running.

With this book in hand, you’ll have all the information that you need to know about the following topics (and more):

*. Planning your wireless home network

*.Evaluating and selecting wireless networking equipment for installation in your home

*. Installing and configuring wireless networking equipment in your home

*.Sharing an Internet connection over your wireless network

*. Sharing files, printers, and other peripherals over your wireless network

*. Playing computer games over your wireless network

*.Connecting your audio-visual gear to your wireless network

*.Securing your wireless network against prying eyes

*. Discovering devices that you’ll be able to connect to your wireless home network in the future

System Requirements

Virtually any personal computer can be added to a wireless home network, but some computers are easier to add than others. This book focuses on building wireless networks that connect PCs running the Windows operating system (Windows 95 or later) or the Mac OS (Mac OS 9 or later). Wireless networking is also popular among Linux users, but we don’t cover Linux in this book.

Because wireless networking is a relatively new phenomenon, the newest ver­sions of Windows and Mac OS do the best job of helping you quickly and painlessly set up a wireless network. However, because the primary reason for networking your home computers is to make it possible for all the com­puters (and peripherals) in your house to communicate, this book gives you information about connecting computers that run older versions of Windows and the two most widely used versions of Mac OS, as well as connecting those that run the newest versions of these two operating systems.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized into several chapters that are grouped into five parts. The chapters are presented in a logical order — flowing from planning to installing to using your wireless home network — but feel free to use the book as a reference and read the chapters in any order that you want.

Part I: Wireless Networking Fundamentals

The first part of the book is a primer on networking and on wireless network­ing. If you’ve never used a networked computer — much less attempted to install a network — this part of the book provides background information and techno-geek lingo that you need to feel comfortable. Chapter 1 presents general networking concepts; Chapter 2 discusses the most popular wireless networking technology and familiarizes you with wireless networking termi­nology; and Chapter 3 introduces you to several popular alternatives to wire­less networking.

Part II: Making Plans

The second part of the book helps you plan for installing your wireless home network. Chapter 4 helps you decide what you will be connecting to the net­work and where to install wireless networking equipment in your home, and Chapter 5 provides guidance on making buying decisions.

Part III: Installing a Wireless Network

Part III discusses how to install a wireless network in your home and get it up and running. Whether your computers are Apple Macintosh running Mac OS 9 or X (Chapter 8) or are PCs running a Windows 95 or later operating system (Chapters 6 and 7), this part of the book explains how to install and configure your wireless networking equipment. In addition, this part includes a chapter that explains how to use your wireless home network to share a single Internet connection (Chapter 9). The last chapter in this part covers securing your wire­less home network (Chapter 10).

Part IV: Using a Wireless Network

After you get your wireless home network installed and running, you’ll cer­tainly want to use it. Part IV starts by showing you the basics of putting the wireless network to good use: sharing files, folders, printers, and other periph­erals (Chapter 11). We spend some time discussing other cool things that you can do over a wireless network, including playing multi-user computer games (Chapter 12), connecting your audio-visual equipment (Chapter 13), and oper­ating various types of smart home conveniences (Chapter 14).

Bluetooth-enabled devices are becoming more prevalent these days, so you won’t want to miss Chapter 15 or Chapter 16, for that matter, where we describe how to use wireless networking to connect to the Internet through wireless hot spots in coffee shops, hotels, airports, and other public places. How cool is that?

Part V: The Part of Tens

Part V provides four top-ten lists that we think you’ll find interesting — ten frequently asked questions about wireless home networking (Chapter 17); ten troubleshooting tips for improving your wireless home network’s perfor­mance (Chapter 18); ten devices to connect to your wireless home network . . . sometime in the future (Chapter 19); and the top ten sources for more informa­tion about wireless networking (Chapter 20).

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