Planning the Wireless LAN
Before setting up a Wireless LAN, you first must plan your equipment purchase.
The wireless approach to networking has one obvious big advantage: You don’t need Ethernet cables. With this approach, each computer in the network still gets its own Ethernet adapter. As always, this might be an internal card that you have to install yourself. Or it can be an external device you just plug into an existing USB or IEEE 1394 port. In either case, the adapter is essentially an antenna that sends signals to a special wireless Ethernet hub.
Despite the obvious convenience of going wireless, you need to be aware of some potential disadvantages. One is that there’s a limit to how far the signals will travel. You need to estimate your distance requirements before you go shopping and make sure you get a wireless networking kit that can reach far enough to meet your needs.
Then again, there’s a chance that the radio signals used by your networking hub will extend well beyond your home or apartment. If so, some outsider could actually tap into your network using his own equipment. Unless you happen to have evil computer geniuses as neighbors or are dealing in top-secret materials that some wealthy, powerful organization or government might want to tap into, this is probably not much of a threat. But do take care of wireless security, read on Securing Your Wireless Network here , here and here.
Finally, you do need to be aware that virtually all electronic devices generate radio signals. And sometimes those signals “collide” and cause problems. For example, it’s possible that the radio signals emanating from a radio, TV, microwave oven, or cordless telephone handset might interfere with your network (or vice versa). The solution to that potential problem is to purchase wireless networking hardware that enables you to choose from a selection of frequencies (channels) to use for the network. That way, if you discover some interference among your electrical devices, you can just switch the network to another channel to stop the interference.
