Live Wireless and Free
By Dale Dougherty
If you're looking for a new project—something to get your juices flowing again, the way they flowed when you first got an Internet connection or built your first Web site—try setting up a wireless LAN at your home or office. This is a small change to your computing environment, but one that will have you buzzing that you've cut the Ethernet cord. I've had a wireless LAN at home for over a year and now there's a wireless LAN at work, allowing me and my laptop to roam freely from room to room in my house, or from my desk to the conference room at the office.
A wireless LAN based on the IEEE 802.11b standard uses the 2.4-GHz microwave band and can move data at a top rate of 11 Mbps. To work with a wireless LAN, each of your computers needs a wireless card, typically a PCMCIA card. This card, because it contains an antenna, sticks out an inch or so from your computer. You also need an access point—a device that serves as a hub for the wireless LAN and is connected by wire to your modem or network. This equipment can be obtained from several vendors, including Lucent, IBM, Intel, Cisco, and 3Com. Because of the IEEE 802.11b standard, you can intermix products from different vendors in the same network.
At home, I set up a wireless LAN to connect three PCs, including those that my kids use in their bedrooms. This way I avoided running wire to distant parts of the house. I was really impressed by the wireless range because the intervening walls didn't seem to matter. Now my family uses the same Internet connection and shares a common printer. I even added an iMac to our network.
