The 85 Design for Very Simple Home Networks

The 85% Design for Very Simple Home Networks

Most of this chapter is unnecessary if you're establishing a wireless network in a small house for the purpose of sharing an Internet connection. What most people do (and at least 85% of the Wi-Fi networks I've seen and worked on fall into this category) is place a router and Wi-Fi access point near where your Internet broadband modem (cable, satellite, or DSL) is.

Most people who create small home networks already have a broadband Internet connection, and there is usually a computer on a desk somewhere in the house where the connection is already in use. If the house isn't enormous, it doesn't matter much where in the house this is. You can park an access point or wireless gateway near the cable/ DSL modem and install a Wi-Fi client adapter in all the other computers in the house, and you're done. There really aren't a great many more decisions to be made.

This '85% design' is shown in Figure 4.1. The 'wired' portion of the network is all on or under the desk where Dad keeps his computer. The wireless residential gateway (like the Linksys BEFW11S4) connects to Dad's computer and to the cable/DSL modem with short runs of Category 5 networking cable. Each of the other three computers in the house is equipped with a Wi-Fi client adapter. And that's your whole network!

Figure 4.1: The '85% Design' for Very Simple Networks.

I recommend that you read the rest of this chapter even if this simple design will work for you, but if you're impatient, you can skip ahead to the beginning of Chapter 5, or even Chapter 6 if you're impatient to get on with your Wi-Fi implementation.