Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P5 docx

Book II Chapter 6 Getting Your PC On the Net 99 Configuring Vista You have three options:  • Home: You are using this on a private network, such as at home. Your computer can be discovered on the network, and firewall restrictions are somewhat relaxed.  • Work: You are using this connection at work, where your computer is managed by an IT department. This location is virtually identical to the Home location, except that the firewall is further tuned to allow management connections in.  • Public location: You are using your computer in an untrusted net- work that’s outside your control. The computer will be hidden, and the firewall is very restrictive. The shields are up, and phasers are set to kill! 4. Select the Home option. Confirming and changing settings Figure 6-16 shows the Vista system tray. Look at the picture of the two com- puters with the globe. The icon indicates you are connected to a network (otherwise there would be a red X on top), and the globe indicates that you have a path to the Internet through this connection. Figure 6-16: The Vista system tray. Hovering over this icon gives even more details. From the box that appears, you can see that this computer is connected to the renfrew network and has access to both the local network and the Internet. The house to the left tells you that the security location is Home. Finally, the signal strength is four bars out of five, otherwise known as Very Good. To the Control Panel! Launch the Control Panel by choosing Start➪Control Panel. Then choose Network and Internet➪Network and Sharing Center. (If you haven’t noticed by now, everything in Vista seems much cleaner than before, just harder to find!) The Network and Sharing Center is shown in Figure 6-17. Along the top you can see the same information you learned from the icon in the system tray. The bottom half shows you all the security settings. In Figure 6-17, you can see that this machine is configured for very limited sharing. You may click on each row to change the setting. 100 Configuring Vista Figure 6-17: The Network and Sharing Center. To the left are several tasks, the most important of which is the Manage Wireless Networks task. Clicking this takes you to a menu that does much the same as the Wireless Network Properties from Windows XP. Figure 6-18 shows this menu. Figure 6-18: Managing Wireless Networks in Vista. The Manage Wireless Networks menu shows a list of all the currently con- figured networks; in the example above, there is only one. If you need to reorder the networks, so that one is tried before another, then click and drag Book II Chapter 6 Getting Your PC On the Net 101 Pushing Boundaries the network to the place in the list you want (Windows XP had Up and Down buttons to achieve the same thing). The Add button adds a network in much the same way that Windows XP does it. But what’s my address? Our final stop in the Vista configuration is to find your network informa- tion, which is helpful to know if you ever call your service provider for help. From the Network Sharing Center, choose the Manage Network Connections option. Double-click the wireless adapter, and you see Figure 6-19. Figure 6-19: Viewing the adapter status. This dialog box is almost exactly like the Windows XP counterpart. You can see that this adapter has access to the Internet through IPv4 but has limited IPv6 connectivity (this is nothing to worry about, as most of the Internet uses the IPv4 connections, and Vista’s trying to get ahead of the curve by setting IP version 6), Again, just like Windows XP, you can see the connection timer, speed, strength, and packet counters. The Details button shows the exact IP addresses involved. Pushing Boundaries At some point, you’re going to venture out of your house and connect to another network, such as one in a hotel, airport, coffee shop, or another building. 102 Pushing Boundaries Your computer is perfectly capable of keeping track of multiple configura- tions, so connecting to a new network won’t cause any problems when you return home. Most public networks are wide open and have no security. They employ a captive portal, which lets you connect to the network but immediately redi- rects you to a login screen where you must log in, pay, or otherwise identify yourself before getting on the Internet. Remember that your wireless session is available for anyone else to capture, so be careful about typing in credit card numbers and passwords unless the Web site is protected with Secure Sockets Layer or Transport Layer Security (you see a lock in your browser window if this is the case, and the address bar might even change, depend- ing on which browser you use). Book IV, Chapter 1 discusses browser secu- rity in more depth. Also, pay attention to which network you are connecting to. If you are at a hotel, you may want to check with the front desk to find the SSID of the network you should connect to. There may be other open networks you can connect to, but you’d be using someone else’s network, and you can’t be sure what they’re doing to your traffic. Chapter 7: Setting Up Other Hardware In This Chapter ✓ Printing wirelessly ✓ Using wireless file storage ✓ Adding an access point O ne drawback of being wire-free is that carrying your printer every- where you go is a little tricky! Rather than plugging into the printer every time you need to print, let’s get your printer on the network, too! Many printers come with network adapters, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to print from wherever you happen to be. Having your computers on the same network also means they can share files. In this chapter, you discover a way to have a permanent file server on your network. Finally, if your wireless network doesn’t reach somewhere, I look at adding another access point to your network to expand that reach. Printing Wirelessly Several years ago, the traditional way to get a printer on the network was to shell out big bucks for a printer that supported it, or to buy an adapter that had a parallel cable on one end and a network cable on the other. These devices cost between $50 and $100. I’m not sure about prices in your area, but that’s as much as an entry-level printer. Over the past few years, printers have both dropped in price and become more feature rich. One of the features you can expect to see on some new printers is a wireless network card. This means that the printer can be placed anywhere there’s a power outlet. The extra cost to get a model with the wireless card is minimal, and it’s only going to get lower. For example, the device I’m demonstrating here is a color inkjet printer that also copies, scans, and faxes. It’s got an 802.11g wireless adapter that can be found online for $150. 104 Printing Wirelessly Just like the network adapter you installed earlier, you’ll need some drivers for your printer. This time, the drivers tell your computer how to communi- cate with the printer over the network and how to operate the extra features such as scanning and faxing. As usual, if you’ve got a different printer than the one I’m using, your screens will be different. However, the steps are similar. Before you get started, have a look at the documentation that comes with your printer. The printer I’m using comes with a note that says if you intend to use the printer on a network that you should ignore the quick start guide and refer to the network installation guide. Plug your printer in and install the ink cartridges per the directions in the manual. To set the wireless configuration on the printer, you first have to get it set up on the wired network. To do so, follow these steps: 1. Plug the Ethernet cable that came with the printer into the back of the printer and the other end into your wireless router. Figure 7-1 shows the network port on the back of the printer. Figure 7-1: The wired port on the printer. Book II Chapter 7 Setting Up Other Hardware 105 Printing Wirelessly Your printer picks up its initial address from DHCP. If your printer is nowhere near your router, bring your router to the printer rather than the other way around. The only thing you lose is Internet access, which isn’t needed for the installation anyway. 2. Put the CD that came with the printer into your CD drive, and you see the initial screen, shown in Figure 7-2. Figure 7-2: The initial printer installation screen. 3. Click the Install button to begin the installation. After accepting the license and going through the introductory screens, you are prompted to indicate if this is a network installation or not. You see a couple more screens of information, after which you are asked how you’re connected to the printer (shown in Figure 7-3). Method one is the simplest, as you are already set up that way (despite the picture in Figure 7-4 showing the computer plugged into the network, it works just as well over wireless). 4. Select Next and the software attempts to discover the printer. If your computer has the Windows firewall enabled, then a dialog box appears so that you can make a firewall exception. Figure 7-5 shows the dialog box, to which you should select Unblock. 5. After a moment, your printer will be discovered, and you can con- tinue clicking Next until you are asked how you want to print, as shown in Figure 7-6. 106 Printing Wirelessly Figure 7-3: Is this a network installation? Figure 7-4: How are you connected to the printer? 6. Even though the printer is plugged in now, you eventually want to get it on the wireless network, so select Wireless. The software will scan for available wireless networks and then present a list of SSIDs that you can connect to, which is shown in Figure 7-7. This is almost identical to how you chose which network to connect your computer to. 7. Click on your network name to select it and then click the Next button. If your network uses WEP, WPA, or WPA2, you must enter a password. Book II Chapter 7 Setting Up Other Hardware 107 Printing Wirelessly Figure 7-5: Unblocking the application from the firewall. Figure 7-6: How will you be printing? 8. Type your password, confirm the settings, and then the printer will be configured by the software. 9. After the software has confirmed that the printer is configured, you can unplug the wired connection and print a test page when prompted. Your default printer is set to the wireless printer. 108 Sharing Files Wirelessly Figure 7-7: The list of wireless networks If you noticed the WPS option during the setup, then good for you! For some reason, the current documentation specifically tells you not to use WPS, but after you’ve done the initial installation it works fine. This way would be handy, for instance, should you move the printer to a different network. From the control panel on the front of the printer, select Setup ➪Network Settings➪Wireless LAN setup. From there, you can change the network set- tings, including performing a WPS setup. You still need the driver on your computer to print, though. Sharing Files Wirelessly Sharing files between computers over a network, wired or wireless, is noth- ing new. However, you do find a few disadvantages: ✦ The computer with the files on it has to be turned on. The current trend is to save energy by turning off computers when they’re not in use — which is good. ✦ The computer with the files on it has to be connected to the network. If the file you need is on a laptop that’s not at home, you’ve got a problem. ✦ It’s more difficult and less secure to share files with the Internet. If you want to grab some of your home files when you’re at work, for example, the usual solution is to expose one of your home computers to the Internet. [...]... share, then you don’t have to format the disk Additionally, you can see some partitions listed in the top table Formatting a disk deletes everything on that disk Gone! Kaput! Copy your stuff off the disk to another computer before you format; otherwise, it’s gone! Sharing Files Wirelessly 111 Follow these steps to format a disk: 1 After you back up your data, look down to the Format Disk section of the... Formatting the disk Disks must be formatted and partitioned before they can be used This process lays out certain structures on the disk that the computer uses to remember where files are placed and which parts of the disk are free You can format a disk many different ways; however, not all formats are supported by the router It’s easy to determine if you have to format your disk again — if you have... the Web interface Check the button next to the name of the disk and push the Format Disk button You receive a warning indicating that everything on the disk will be deleted, as shown in Figure 7-10 Book II Chapter 7 Setting Up Other Hardware Figure 7-10: A warning before formatting a disk 2 If you are sure you’re ready to format the disk, click the OK button After you’ve done that, you are asked... Book II Chapter 7 Setting Up Other Hardware Wireless routers generally have one Ethernet port that goes to the Internet, and about four ports for connecting wired devices into your internal network These four internal ports are bridged to the wireless side, meaning that they are on the same network 118 Adding an Access Point ✦ Only one DHCP server is needed for the whole network If you had two DHCP... of a Linksys WRT610N which has such a feature Book II Chapter 7 Setting Up Other Hardware Figure 7-8: A USB port on a router for an external storage device A router draws far less power than a computer, is always available, and its position in the network is ideal for performance The router is also able to share files to both the internal network and the Internet at large because it sits on both... Sharing Files Wirelessly Figure 7-9: The storage menu The disk details, shown in Figure 7-9 also include a column called Create Share Depending on how your disk is set up, you may or may not see a button in that column that also says Create Share If you do see the button, then you can skip the next section If your view is like that shown in Figure 7-9, you need to format the disk Formatting the disk... disk into multiple logical disks This formatting process assigns one partition to the disk, using all available space, so the name of the partition isn’t that important 3 Type the name of a partition and click the Format button You are asked again to confirm that you’re okay with any data on the disk being wiped clean, after which the router can chug away while it formats the disk This may take a few... your disk 112 Sharing Files Wirelessly After the formatting is complete, you are returned to the main storage menu (see Figure 7-12) showing the partition that was just created Note that the Create Share button shows up along with the partition Figure 7-11: Supplying the name of a partition Figure 7-12 also shows that a shared folder called public has been created Before you can use this share,... media files on the shared hard drive will be instantly accessible to your audio software! Adding an Access Point Chapter 1 pointed out that wireless waves don’t travel forever, especially if dense objects like walls are in the way It’s possible that you’ve got some wireless dead spots in your network, or even a whole area such as an outside workshop Moving your router around might help things out, but...Sharing Files Wirelessly 109 Add to this that external USB storage is becoming larger and cheaper For much less than $200, you can get a 1TB disk that can be used on any computer in your house, without having to take anything apart Unfortunately, after you plug one of those bad boys into your laptop, you have no more mobility! . is set to the wireless printer. 108 Sharing Files Wirelessly Figure 7-7: The list of wireless networks If you noticed the WPS option during the setup, then good for you! For some reason,. is plugged in now, you eventually want to get it on the wireless network, so select Wireless. The software will scan for available wireless networks and then present a list of SSIDs that you. your view is like that shown in Figure 7-9, you need to format the disk. Formatting the disk Disks must be formatted and partitioned before they can be used. This process lays out certain structures