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Last month we discussed the installation of a "Wireless Access Point / Router" and explained what was necessary for the "wired" part of the connection. This month we'll continue with the "wireless" side.

I'll assume you have the access point installed and your wired connection is working. That was the hard part of the installation. With wireless, you can connect one or many laptops as well as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) such as Palms (Palmone), iPaqs (H/P), Axioms (Dell) or others that have wireless capability.

I'll be using the Linksys model again, but others have similar instructions, so you'll need to check the manual that comes with your particular model.

The steps necessary to set up your wireless are:

1 - Open Internet Explorer, Firefox, or your web browser of choice and connect to the access point. The "default" address is http://192.168.1.1

2 - Enter the username and password. Unless you've changed this based on last month's article, the defaults are: username = leave blank / password = admin

3 - You should now see an initial screen with a "tab" that says wireless. Click on wireless and you will be on the "Basic" settings page with the following options available.

4 - Wireless Mode: AP (Access Point) / Client / Adhoc - select AP

5 - Wireless Network Mode:
Disabled / B-Only / G-Only / Mixed (you may have other options as well) Disabled is self explanatory.
B-Only - if the laptop you are using states that it is 802.11b, and you have no other devices, select B-Only G-Only - if the laptop you are using states that it is 802.11g, and you have no other devices, select G-Only Mixed - If you have multiple laptops and / or PDAs with .11b or .11g

The "b" designator is an earlier standard for wireless transmission and only transmits at 11 megabits a second. The "g" designator is more recent and transmits at 54 megabits a second. (There are now devices on the market that have "afterburners" for higher speeds, but "b" and "g" are the most prevalent)

6 - Wireless Network Name (SSID): this is where you give your wireless network a name of your choosing. The default is normally the manufacturer's name. I've selected the name of the street as my identifier.

7 - Wireless Channel: There are 14 to choose from and the default is usually 6, which is fine as long as you don't have a conflict with other Access Points (APs) in your neighborhood.

8 - Wireless SSID Broadcast: If you enable this, your AP's name will be broadcast so you and others can see it. If you disable this, you will have to manually set up any portable devices if you want to use the AP. A word of caution - if you don't use security and you enable the broadcast of the AP name, anyone in range of your AP can connect and use the AP to surf the web, or possibly try to "hack" into your computer network. I have this enabled, but WITH security (explained below)

The final step on this and other pages is to "Save Settings"

The next tab "Wireless Security" is extremely important. Here you have the following items that need to be set:

1 - Security Mode:
Disable - self explanatory
WPA Pre-Shared Key
WPA Radius
Radius
WEP - for simplicity - select this or disable to setup
your wireless network. You can always return to
this later to establish a more secure connection.

2 - WEP Encryption: This determines how many "bits," 64 or 128, will be used to encrypt your data when it is transmitted over the wireless portion of the network.. You need to check the laptop or PDA to determine what security is available on your device. 128 bits is more secure, but some earlier wireless cards only supported 64 bits, so you may have to use this setting.

3 - If WEP is enabled, you then enter a Passphrase: this can be anything you desire, but remember it because you will use this for the laptop / PDA to generate the keys needed on them to enable them to connect to the network.

4 - After entering the Passphrase you will need to click on "Generate" to actually create the 4 keys that can be used for wireless communications.

5 - Again, the last step is to "Save Settings"

There are other tabs under the "Wireless Setup," but the defaults are sufficient for now and shouldn't require any changes for your use of a Wireless device.

At this point your Access Point / Router is ready to accept wireless devices. Next month we'll look at the portable device side and set up a laptop and PDA to access the internet wirelessly.