Wonderful Wireless
My home LAN is like so:
* a Windows PC (whom you've met as WPC) running Windows XP, into which is plugged a DSL modem thoughtfully provided by my ISP who is also my telephone provider.
* a Belkin 2.4Ghz 802.11b wireless hub, which is plugged via Ethernet cable into WPC
* a second WPC in my kids' bedroom which is also plugged via Ethernet cable into Belkin
If I've got all these Ethernet cables all over the place, you may well ask why I have a wireless hub. The answer is the Sony Vaio notebook on which I live. That is the only gizmo that uses the wireless part of my network.
Because I live in an apartment constructed largely of concrete and brick the wireless signal doesn't travel very well from room to room and Ethernet is the only reliable way of connecting the rooms. So when we furnished the house we laid in Ethernet cabling in all the rooms and that's still the backbone of my home LAN.
However, since I spend most of my time at home in my bedroom on my comfortable sofa chair with my laptop on my lap (hence the name, duh!) in the same room as my wireless hub, wireless works well for me.
To err is human, but to be cautious is wise. I use WEP encryption on my wireless hub and MAC address recognition. If you haven't a clue what that means, take heart, I used to be like you.
Essentially, that means every computer that wants to connect to my LAN either needs to be physically plugged into the hub via an Ethernet cord, or authenticated via WEP and MAC. Okay, that's not much better. I know, I know.
How's this: every computer that wants to connect to my LAN via wireless needs to have a password to connect to the network and needs to be registered as a good guy. WEP takes care of the password bit and MAC takes care of the good-guy registration bit. WEP ensures that whatever data passes through the air is encrypted and MAC is a unique identification number that tells my hub that this computer is authorized to connect to the LAN.
So before I can introduce Mini to my LAN, I need to ensure that she fits in well. I toy with the idea of running an Ethernet cable from Mini to the hub. It's only about 3 feet away but it means one more ugly cable. Mini is supposed to have built-in wireless networking. Let's see if she means it.
System Preferences seems the logical place to go, so I pop it open. (I've explored the OS X interface enough by now to figure out where to find SP.) Network under "Internet & Network" seems an appropriate option. The dialog box (is that what they call them in OS X?) has a Show Me option and I find AirPort under that. I've already spent enough time on the Apple site to understand that this not a reference to Heathrow, so I choose that.
Hey, the first thing that shows up is "AirPort id" and that looks like a MAC address. This is cool. In Windows I used to click Start, Run, type in "cmd" to get into a command line interface, type in "ipconfig /all" and then wade through a largely incomprehensible list of data to get the MAC address. (And, of course, I needed to know all about ipconfig from my DOS days.)
In OS X, three mouse clicks and I'm there.
Joining my home network is just as easy (once I remember how to get the WEP password from my router interface). AirPort sniffs out my home network plus a couple of others that seem to be running in an apartment above or below. I choose mine, type in my password (and I love the option to display the password while typing since for some strange reason my router favors a password expressed in hex).
I'm connected and on the Internet in less time than it takes for a cup of coffee to brew. This is so much easier than setting up wireless LAN access was on my Sony Vaio.
I'm falling in love with Mini, but there's still the small problem of sharing a monitor with WPC and without a KVM. How?
* a Windows PC (whom you've met as WPC) running Windows XP, into which is plugged a DSL modem thoughtfully provided by my ISP who is also my telephone provider.
* a Belkin 2.4Ghz 802.11b wireless hub, which is plugged via Ethernet cable into WPC
* a second WPC in my kids' bedroom which is also plugged via Ethernet cable into Belkin
If I've got all these Ethernet cables all over the place, you may well ask why I have a wireless hub. The answer is the Sony Vaio notebook on which I live. That is the only gizmo that uses the wireless part of my network.
Because I live in an apartment constructed largely of concrete and brick the wireless signal doesn't travel very well from room to room and Ethernet is the only reliable way of connecting the rooms. So when we furnished the house we laid in Ethernet cabling in all the rooms and that's still the backbone of my home LAN.
However, since I spend most of my time at home in my bedroom on my comfortable sofa chair with my laptop on my lap (hence the name, duh!) in the same room as my wireless hub, wireless works well for me.
To err is human, but to be cautious is wise. I use WEP encryption on my wireless hub and MAC address recognition. If you haven't a clue what that means, take heart, I used to be like you.
Essentially, that means every computer that wants to connect to my LAN either needs to be physically plugged into the hub via an Ethernet cord, or authenticated via WEP and MAC. Okay, that's not much better. I know, I know.
How's this: every computer that wants to connect to my LAN via wireless needs to have a password to connect to the network and needs to be registered as a good guy. WEP takes care of the password bit and MAC takes care of the good-guy registration bit. WEP ensures that whatever data passes through the air is encrypted and MAC is a unique identification number that tells my hub that this computer is authorized to connect to the LAN.
So before I can introduce Mini to my LAN, I need to ensure that she fits in well. I toy with the idea of running an Ethernet cable from Mini to the hub. It's only about 3 feet away but it means one more ugly cable. Mini is supposed to have built-in wireless networking. Let's see if she means it.
System Preferences seems the logical place to go, so I pop it open. (I've explored the OS X interface enough by now to figure out where to find SP.) Network under "Internet & Network" seems an appropriate option. The dialog box (is that what they call them in OS X?) has a Show Me option and I find AirPort under that. I've already spent enough time on the Apple site to understand that this not a reference to Heathrow, so I choose that.
Hey, the first thing that shows up is "AirPort id" and that looks like a MAC address. This is cool. In Windows I used to click Start, Run, type in "cmd" to get into a command line interface, type in "ipconfig /all" and then wade through a largely incomprehensible list of data to get the MAC address. (And, of course, I needed to know all about ipconfig from my DOS days.)
In OS X, three mouse clicks and I'm there.
Joining my home network is just as easy (once I remember how to get the WEP password from my router interface). AirPort sniffs out my home network plus a couple of others that seem to be running in an apartment above or below. I choose mine, type in my password (and I love the option to display the password while typing since for some strange reason my router favors a password expressed in hex).
I'm connected and on the Internet in less time than it takes for a cup of coffee to brew. This is so much easier than setting up wireless LAN access was on my Sony Vaio.
I'm falling in love with Mini, but there's still the small problem of sharing a monitor with WPC and without a KVM. How?
posted by Warble at 9:09 PM
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