Introduction

Wireless networking has become nearly ubiquitous. Many laptops include wireless capabilities built directly into them, and wireless hardware, including both routers and network adapters, have become increasingly affordable. You can buy a router or network adapter for under $50.

Additionally, hotspots, public areas where you can connect to the Internet, have become increasingly popular as well. There are literally thousands of hotspots available, in airports, hotels, cafes, and even entire metropolitan neighborhoods.

XP has played a big part in making all this possible. It includes easy-to-use wireless networking built directly into it. That means that instead of wrestling with different types of software to make a wireless connection, there's a simple, standard way of connecting and setting up networks.

XP's Service Pack 2 (SP2) makes wireless networking even easier than earlier versions of XP. The client for making a connection to wireless networks is simpler, and it includes Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption built into it.

In this chapter, you'll learn all about wireless and XP, everything from setting up wireless routers to installing wireless network adapters, protecting wireless networks, connecting to hotspots and more. Note that all recipes show how to use wireless networking with SP2.