This is a review and instruction to setting up and wifi (wireless) network. Please have a read and add any thing that I may have missed.

The guide set here, is a guide taking you through buying hardware, the differing types wifi connections types, and should cover all you should need.

If you have a network in your home or office, there are several different ways to connect the computers on your network together. The article How Home Networking Works covers all of the basic networking principles and outlines what you need and how to do it...
Wifi is the wireless way to handle networking. It is also known as 802.11 networking and wireless networking. The big advantage of Wifi is its simplicity. You can connect computers anywhere in your home or office or even friends living on the same block without the need for wires. The computers connect to the network using radio signals, up to 500 Meters with out getting to much trouble, but we will go into line of sight lower down.


· Wifi radios that work with the 802.11b and 802.11g standards transmit at 2.4 GHz, while those that comply with the 802.11a standard transmit at 5 GHz.
· Wifi radios use much more efficient coding techniques that also contribute to the much higher data rates. For 802.11a and 802.11g, the technique is known as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). For 802.11b, it is called Complementary Code Keying (CCK). See this page for details.
· The radios used for Wife have the ability to change frequencies. 802.11b cards can transmit directly on any of three bands, or they can split the available radio bandwidth into dozens (you will see 12 channels on your wireless set up) of channels and frequency hop rapidly between them. The advantage of frequency hopping is that it is much more immune to interference and can allow dozens of Wifi cards to talk simultaneously without interfering with each other. The maximum I believe to be supported is with the new 801.11G+ with its 45 PCs on the single connection.
802.11b can handle up to 11 megabits per second (although 7 megabits per second is more typical, and 802.11b may fall back as low as 1 or 2 megabits per second if there is a lot of interference). 802.11a and 802.11g can handle up to 54 megabits per second (although 30 megabits per second is more typical). 801.11G+ 108/125 Megabits per second, which was typically 100Mbs but dropped to 80 at some points.
You might be wondering where the funny 802.11 nomenclatures come from. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) creates standards, and they number these standards in unique ways. The 802.11 standard covers wireless networks. The a, b and g notations identify different flavours of the 802.11 standard:
· 802.11b was the first version to reach the marketplace. It is the slowest and least expensive of the three but prices seams to have merged together as a seller there is not that much difference. As mentioned above, 802.11b transmits at 2.4 GHz and can handle up to 11 megabits per second.
· 802.11a was next. It operates at 5 GHz and can handle up to 54 megabits per second.
· 802.11g are a mix of both worlds. It operates at 2.4Ghz (giving it the cost advantage of 802.11b) but it has the 54 megabits per second speed of 802.11a.
Fortunately, all of this radio technology is hidden in a Wife card and is completely invisible. Wifi, in fact, is one of the easiest technologies that you will ever use.





Adding a PC
One of the best things about Wife is how simple it is. Many new laptops already come with a Wife card built in -- in many cases you don't have to do anything to start using Wife. It is also easy to add a Wife card to an older laptop or a desktop PC. Here's what you do:
· Buy an 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g network card. 802.11g have the advantage of higher speeds and good interoperability on 802.11b equipment and other network devices. But the network will only run at the slowest speeds available.
o For a laptop, this card will normally be a PCMCIA card that you slide into a PCMCIA slot on your laptop. Or you can buy a small external adapter and plug it into a USB port. This can burn out quickly from reports that I have read.
o For a desktop machine, you can buy a PCI card that you install inside the machine, or a small external adapter that you connect to the computer with a USB cable.
· Install the card
· Install the drivers for the card
· Find an 802.11 hotspot
· Access the hotspot.

IF you are adding you will need the WEP key or you will just see the router and not be able to connect. Write down the key that you have used before on the other network cards or you may have to reset the WiFI router if you forget and change each PC's WEP key so they can connect.
A hotspot is a connection point for a Wife network. It is a small box that is hardwired into the Internet. The box contains an 802.11 radio that can simultaneously talk to up to 100 or so 802.11 cards. There are many Wife hotspots now available in public places like restaurants, hotels, libraries and airports. You can also create your own hotspot in your home, as we will see in a later section. The software you install will provide you with the signal strength, the lower the numbers the better the connection.

Typically. The number will rise because of attenuation (feel free to web search this as its important) A dry wall (with out bricks) will add 3DB, a brick wall will add about 9, concrete will add about 26DB. For an ideal connection you will NOT go above 47DB before signal degradation erects speed. This is often effected by the line of site, if you have a PC to PC connection in a single room there will be attenuation form the computer systems and bounced signals also other electrical goods with bounce the signal.

SET UP
On older machines you often have to go through this simple 3-step process to connect to a hotspot:
· Access the software for the 802.11 card -- normally there is an icon for the card down in the system tray at the bottom right of the screen.
· Click the "Search button" in the software. The card will search for all of the available hotspots in the area and show you a list, which will be named, you will need to write down the SSID and WEP to connect, but this will be later on in this topic.
· Double-click on one of the hotspots to connect to it.
On ancient 802.11 equipment, there is no automatic search feature. You have to find what is known as the SSID of the hotspot (usually a short word of 10 characters or less) as well as the channel number (an integer between 1 and 11) and type these two pieces of information in manually. All the search feature is doing is grabbing these two pieces of information from the radio signals generated by the hotspot and displaying them for you.

Wife hotspots can be open or secure. If a hotspot is open, then anyone with a Wife card can access the hotspot. If it is secure, then the user needs to know a WEP key to connect.
WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, and it is an encryption system for the data that 802.11 sends through the air. WEP has two variations: 64-bit encryption (really 40-bit) and 128-bit encryption (really 104-bit). 40-bit encryption was the original standard but was found to be easily broken (see this page for an explanation). 128-bit encryption is more secure and is what most people use if they enable WEP.
For a casual user, any hotspot that is using WEP is inaccessible unless you know the WEP key.
If you are setting up a hotspot in your home, you may want to create and use a 128-bit WEP key to prevent the neighbours from casually eavesdropping on your network or even printing on your printer.
On your WIFI router, there will be setting such as AP setting, IP setting and WEP setting,
The AP setting is the main one you will look at, first the SSID will be located here, which is what the network is called (what you see when the connection PC tries to connect. The WEP key is the important setting as this stops other people using your connection. There is up to 256Bit encryption for you Wife connection, enter this onto your router (main box) and enter the key, the key is a random section of words or letters, write it down as you will need this to connect any PC to your network, and needs to be entered onto each PC in the software that came with the card.
Whether at home or on the road, you need to know the WEP key, and then enter it into the Wife card's software, to gain access to the network. The WEP key is a Password and should be treated as such.

HOTSPOT
It is very easy to set up a Wife hotspot in your own home. You can do it in one of two ways:
· If you already have several computers hooked together on an Ethernet network and want to add a wireless hotspot to the mix, you can purchase a Wireless Access Point router and plug it into the Ethernet network.
· If you are setting up a network in your home for the first time, or if you are upgrading, you can buy a Wireless Access Point Router. This is a single box that contains: 1) a port to connect to your cable modem or DSL modem, 2) a router, 3) an Ethernet hub, 4) a firewall and 5) the wireless access point. You can connect the computers in your home to this box either with traditional Ethernet cables or with wireless cards dependant on what box you get, you can add a printer here that supports IP addressed printers. But you can also add a WIFI printer server that works in much the same way and Wife networking.

Either way, once you turn your Wireless Access Point on, you will have a Wife hotspot in your house. In a typical home, your new hotspot will provide coverage for about 30.5 meters in all directions, with walls and floors do cut down on the range. Even so, you should get good coverage throughout a typical home. For a large home, you can buy inexpensive signal boosters to increase the range of the Hotspot, which may be a good idea if your having connection and signal problems or that there is many obstacles that are causing low speeds due to attenuation. A thing to try first before getting a signal booster is to move the router or PC, as 30 centimetres can make a lot of difference. Also if you have a subwoofer near the PC base or a ring of cables will affect the signal.

If you are setting up your 802.11 networks from scratch, you will have to choose between 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. 802.11b is slightly less expensive, but it is the slowest of the three options. For home use, 802.11g costs just a little more, but is up to 5 times faster and 11G+ being ten times faster. If you will be doing a lot of file transfers between computers in your home or you are sharing a high-speed Internet connection, 802.11g+ is definitely the way to go.
CONFIG
Most wireless access points come with default values built-in. Once you plug them in, they start working with these default values in 90 percent of the cases. However, you may want to change things. You normally get to set three things on your access point:
· The SSID -- it will normally default to the manufacturer's name (e.g. "Linksys" or "Netgear"). You can set it to any word or phrase you like.
· The channel -- normally it will default to channel 6. However, if a nearby neighbour is also using an access point and it is set to channel 6, there can be interference. Choose any other channel between 1 and 11. An easy way to see if your neighbours have access points is to use the search feature that comes with your wireless card this can be manually set within your software package but they must match.
· The WEP key -- The default is to disable WEP. If you want to turn it on, you have to enter a WEP key and turn on 128-bit encryption or higher but 128-bit is fine.

Access points come with simple instructions for changing these three values. Normally you do it with a Web browser. Once it is configured properly, you can use your new hotspot to access the Internet from anywhere in your home. IF you do stupid things like I fist did, you can access the Wife router from the Wife card and not the PC if you’re bridging the connection from that point. (Bridging the connection refers to a shard Internet connection on a PC with a Modem and you use a network (RJ45) connection to share information.
For more information on wireless networking and related topics, check out the manual and the manufactures website, but you can add your questions to this topic.

PICKING HARDWARE
If you have to buy a access point or Wife router there is two types, a router that just share the Wife connections or a router modem, this allows your Wife network to be always connected, the modem will connect to your ISP and is set up via the web browser interface. If your current modem has a RJ45 (network) connection you can plug in your router here and you will not need to buy a modem router.
You may want to use a router to connect to your MAIN PC such as when you connect a wired network, connect the router and just run the networking wizard from the network connection and this will get you started. You may not be able to access the Wife router on a wired connection but you will be able to set up and configure it via a Wife card. Some have ports (rj45’s) so you can wire back into the PC to set it up.
The newer 11G+ are cost effective, a WIFI kit from my site which will hold a speed up to 125Mbs will set up back £75 (router and PCI card) the costs are cheap really and work out about the same or less in most cases to a wired network.
Most of the Wife hard ware is cross compatible, but getting faster cards will not change the speed at the router, so start with a faster router then pick your cards.

NETWORK LAG.
There is some lag as your adding to the hops that you need to jump to get to an IP address else where in the world. Adding two jumps this can be 10Ms or 100Ms dependant on your connection and attenuation levels. Connecting a larger number of PCs to a wireless network can but trouble-some, you router has a lot of channels as mentioned above, some routers will allow 10 or so connections but our router will allow 45 connections as it runs on a higher bandwidth. I would not say that the network will run well with 45 people connected but 25 or so would be idea. But in any case I would recommend that you DO NOT max the connections. See the manual and website before buying any hardware and think forward.

Future proofing.
The 11G+ network is the top fastest standard to date. However there may be improvements in WiFi technology bringing speeds up to gigabit LAN 10000 Mbs and also not to forget the network overheads, a network overhead effect every connection that you have. This can be 20% which is why your internet connection does not run at the advertised rates as the PC send information using a code and this code is the over head, the code is used to encrypt data and tell the communication PC’s which part of the data goes where.
Please feel free to add to this review how to guide

Rory,

Cheers for that, I am about to set up a wireless network at lunch, this could help

I m not sure if anything is said about high gain arials.
Some Wi fi access points dont come withthe best gain on them already. if you have thick brick walls or in deed double layers walls the signal will get weak. you can purchase antena that are external to go on an out side wall there not two exspensive but they do cost money. The benifit is that the signal is much greater.

you may need one at each end of the connection however with most cards (PCI's) they form the problem, using a card with a pigtail arial should help.

But test the system first before getting an arial as it may work, but dont forget to cost it in as you may need it.

nice FAQ Rory.