You can troubleshoot the network components of wireless networking in Windows Vista in the same way that you troubleshoot a physical connection. All the same rules apply within the realm of wireless for IP address, DNS, DHCP, and so on. You will, however, have different issues that you may encounter during the initial establishment of the wireless connection.

If you are having a problem connecting to a wireless network, you must first look to these settings to isolate the problem:

SSID
If the SSID is broadcast by the wireless access point, it will be correctly configured in the connection settings. However, administrators often choose to not broadcast the SSID for security purposes. This means that you would have to know the SSID and enter it manually when setting up a connection to the wireless network. If this is the case, double-check the SSID that was entered during setup; if it is incorrect, you will be unable to communicate.

Security
You must be using the same type of security on the local system that is being used on the access point. An incorrect setting here means you will not be able to communicate with the network. If these settings are incorrect, you may see an error, in the Connect to a Network window that states the settings do not match.

Again, Windows Vista does a good job of matching these settings for a network it can see. If you manually set up the network or a user changes a setting, you will need to know what security type to configure in order to get the connection working. Additionally, the correct security type may be selected but another security setting may be incorrect. Also check to make sure that your passphrases, keys, and key indexes are correct where applicable.

WPA-Enterprise
If you are using WPA-Enterprise, remember that there is an authentication server of some type in the mix. Make sure that the user can connect to the server and that the firewall isn’t blocking this access. In addition, with WPA-Enterprise, you can use certificates for authentication.

Wireless networking has come on strong in the past few years. Wireless networking is defined by the IEEE 802.11 standard. Also known as Wi-Fi, 802.11 comes in three flavors: a, b, and g. The differences relate mainly to the operating frequency and the available bandwidth.

To utilize wireless networking in a permanent setting where a wireless network needs to exist full time, you need both a Wireless Access Point (WAP) and a wireless NIC in each computer. A wireless network that uses a WAP is known as an infrastructure network. All the devices must support the same standard of Wi-Fi; in other words, 802.11b NICs can only talk with 802.11b access points. It is not uncommon to find WAPs and wireless NICs that support multiple standards. When running in infrastructure mode, the WAP is hard-wired to the physical network. All wireless clients must connect to a WAP in order to communicate with other wired and wireless devices.

You can also create an ad hoc network using 802.11 wireless NICs. In an ad hoc network, several machines with wireless cards can communicate with one another without the use of an access point. Each machine in effect acts as both an access point and as a client. Ad hoc networks are great for small meetings or for transferring large files from one machine to another in an area where a network connection is unavailable.

Read more »