How To Set Up a Wi-Fi Network

New opportunities for service revenue are in the air--literally. Wireless networking has penetrated deep into the market. Add to that the explosion of broadband connections in the home and small-business market, and new possibilities for sharing resources wirelessly are everywhere.

While much of today's wireless technology is plug-and-play, complexity rears its head once a user tries to set up networking capabilities, such as sharing printers or file folders. Here is where systems builders can come to the rescue with knowledge, assistance and billable services.

Before you get started, make sure the network you're working on has a good foundation. Range, speed and reliability are key factors; security comes into play, too. Specifically, your clients should be using the latest 802.11g multiple-in, multiple-out (MiMo) technology, which can potentially extend the range and throughput fivefold of a wireless network by using multiple antennas and dividing the wireless signal across them.

On the security front, most Wi-Fi implementations start with a wireless router that connects the broadband WAN with the internal LAN for both wired and wireless connections. The router also protects the local network against external intrusions.

But security doesn't end with the router; a secure network also uses encryption on the wireless signal. Today's wireless routers support various levels of encryption, ranging from 64-bit wired equivalency protocol (WEP) to Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

For this article, the aim is to allow three computers to share an Internet connection, printer, folders on a storage device and folders on the hard drives. I'll assume there's a wireless network with desktop systems, notebooks, a network-attached storage (NAS) box, printer, wireless router and a cable-modem connection to the Internet. The PC operating system should be Windows XP SP2.

First, set up the network router. Most are plug-and-play; still, some settings are dictated by best practices. For example, you should change the default password on the router to prevent unwanted access to the device. This is a simple, yet powerful, way to protect the network. You should also set up DHCP (short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), which automatically assigns IP addresses to PCs on the network. It eliminates the need to set those computers' addresses by hand.

Now it's time to get the wireless portion of the network up and running. For this recipe, I used a D-Link Wireless Access Point. An installation wizard is available that will take you through the device's basic setup. For this, I set up the name of the wireless network (or SSID) as "Magnum_G" and used the default channel of 11. Since the SSID identifies a wireless network signal for client systems trying to attach, be sure to use a meaningful name to identify the network. Channel 11 is the default channel for most wireless networks, and it should work fine. You can change the channel if something else interferes with wirelessly connecting to the network.

You can also choose a different channel if you get any interference or a weak signal. Wi-Fi devices offer a range of channels, and it may take some experimentation to find out which works best for a given network.

Next, be sure to set up wireless encryption. It's a wonder everyone doesn't take this simple step to protect their network.

Now that you have a basic wireless network up and running, let's connect some devices. Windows XP SP2 makes connecting to a wireless network easy. Just select the SSID from the list and connect. If it's an encrypted signal, you'll be prompted for the key. The trick here is to make sure all of the PCs are on the network; once that's done, you can start to share capabilities.

Carol Ann Muff is the operations manager for Magnum Computer Consulting, a New York-based systems integrator.