Software Overview

You won't need any special software to begin using your wireless network equipment. Using the software that comes with your wireless network adapter, you can quickly establish a link between two adpaters (in ad-hoc mode) or connect to the access point (in infrastructure mode).

Again, follow the directions that come with your equipment, but here is the basic idea. There are three settings that are most important. If these are not set correctly and uniformly on each of your network adapters (and your access point, if you have one) your network will not work. These are Mode, SSID, and WEP.

Open the configuration software that comes with your hardware (in fact, it might be running when you start your PC, as many programs are set by default to launch when Windows starts).

Choose Infrastructure or Ad-Hoc. As described earlier, this tells the wireless network equipment whether you are connecting directly to network adapters (ad-hoc mode) or through an access point (infrastructure).

The SSID (Service Set Identifier) is the name of your network. You must use the same SSID on all your equipment or your hardware will not be able to connect to the network. The SSID can be discovered quite easily by a hacker who can use software to "sniff" the SSID over the airwaves. So it doesn't offer protection from unauthorized users within range of your network.

Enable or disable WEP. You need to make sure your wireless encryption settings are the same for all your equipment. Your network adapters and access point all need to have WEP on or off, otherwise your equipment won't link up to each other.

With these settings uniform, your computers should be ready to communicate over the network. You might need to change some network settings on your Windows computers to begin sharing files. But the hard work of software configuration is complete.