Chapter 9: Wireless Networking

With wireless networking, you don't need cables to connect your computers. Instead, wireless networks use radio waves to send and receive network signals. As a result, a computer can connect to a wireless network at any location in your home or office.

Tip 

Wireless networks are especially useful for notebook computers. After all, the main benefit of a notebook computer is that you can move it.

This chapter introduces the ins and outs of using a wireless network.

Diving into Wireless Networking

A wireless network is a network that uses radio signals rather than direct cable connections to exchange information.

A computer with a wireless network connection is like a cellphone. Just as you don't have to be connected to a phone line to use a cellphone, you don't have to be connected to a network cable to use a wireless networked computer.

The following list summarizes some key concepts and terms that you need to understand to set up and use a basic wireless network:

• A wireless network is often referred to as a WLAN, for wireless local-area network.

  TECHNICAL STUFF 

  Some people prefer to switch the acronym around to local-area wireless network, or LAWN.

  The term Wi-Fi is often used to describe wireless networks, although it technically refers to just one form of wireless networks: the 802.11b standard. See the section "Eight-Oh-Two-Dot-Eleventy Something? (Or, Understanding Wireless Standards)," later in this chapter, for more information.

• A wireless network has a name, known as an SSID. SSID stands for service set identifier. (Wouldn't that make a great Jeopardy! question? I'll take obscure four-letter acronyms for $400, please!)

  REMEMBER 

  All the computers that belong to a single wireless network must have the same SSID.

• Wireless networks can transmit over any of several channels.

  For computers to talk to each other, they must be configured to transmit on the same channel.

• The simplest type of wireless network consists of two or more computers with wireless network adapters.

  TECHNICAL STUFF 

  This type of network is an ad hoc mode network.

• A more complex type of network is an infrastructure mode network. All this really means is that a group of wireless computers can be connected to not only each other but also an existing cabled network via a device called a wireless access point, or WAP. (I tell you more about ad hoc and infrastructure networks later in this chapter.)