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With this month's article, I'll presume that by now you have selected an internet provider and have the service connected in your home or apartment. A normal set-up has either a special attachment for the phone line or a separate line from the cable TV connected to a cable modem (which shares your TV cable connection) or DSL modem (short for Digital Subscriber Line, a new technology that allows more data to be sent over existing copper telephone lines), which in turn is connected to your computer. With the addition of a wireless access point / router, you can extend the use of the internet to others in the household and even use a computer or hand-held without the need to be "tied" to the modem.

I'll refer to the Linksys (WRT54G) Wireless Access Point / Router in this series of articles, although there are other manufacturers that provide equivalent types of equipment. The Linksys product page (www.linksys.com) offers some insight as to why I selected this device for my personal use:

When you sign up for Internet service the contract provides for one (1) computer to be registered and used. When you connect to the service the MAC (Media Access Control) Address of your computer is registered and this is the “recognized” user. If you set up a home or office network, other computers cannot be used due to the one-user limitation. The WRT54G gets around this restriction by “cloning” the MAC Address and passing this address to the service provider for all requests. So now you can have many computers on a wired LAN (Local Area Network) and additional wireless connections as well.

I selected the Linksys because it was highly rated, had capacity for the higher speed wireless connections and had everything necessary for a network in one small piece of equipment.

Out of the box, you connect the WRT54G to your computer (using an Ethernet cable) and access it using Internet Explorer, Firefox or any other web browser. You simply type in the address of the box (default is 192.168.1.1) and a “Login” screen appears. The default is a blank name field and the password is “admin”. One of the first things you should do is CHANGE THE PASSWORD! Remember that this box has “wireless” capability, so someone (a neighbor) with a wireless laptop or PDA can “see” your Access Point. The other items you should change are the name of the service (default is Linksys) and add encryption security to the wireless link.

The last thing you need to do is activate the MAC Address “cloning” feature. It's as simple as enabling the feature, clicking on the “Clone Address” button and then saving the new configuration. Of course there are many other settings you can change but the defaults that are set will work in 99% of all installations.

Once these changes have been made, it's just a matter of connecting the Ethernet cable from the internet service provider's modem to the “Internet” port on the router.

You should now have your internet service available to multiple computers. The Linksys box provides all the translation for computer addresses and you have no need for additional contracts for multiple users. You should be aware, though, that every computer connected “shares” the same line and total “bandwidth” (Speed of data transfer). So if User A is downloading a large file at the same time as User B, the time to transfer the files will be longer than if only one person were using the link.

In next month's article, we'll take this installation further with a lesson in how to set up the “wireless” part of the LAN. With wireless you can roam your home / apartment and stay connected as long as the battery on you portable device lasts.

Don't forget: if you have any questions or comments about this or other Hi-Tek articles you can contact me at the Hi-Tek forum listed above.