Wireless Networking Guide - How To Use Wifi

Wifi networking has been around in homes for around 10 years now, during this time it has become more and more popular, which is not surprising when we consider,

Its cheap – setting up a wireless network can now cost less than £100

There are no wires – being able to choose where we connect from maybe the lounge, the office or even the garden for one of our many days of sunshine in the UK ..

Wireless Networking Guide
Each computer be it a laptop or desktop computer must have a wifi networking card, wifi cards come in 4 different types.



USB – The USB network card simply plugs into any USB2 port, it’s just a case of installing the drivers and it’s installed.

PCMCIA – Just about every laptop has a PCMCIA port or 2, the slots are long and thin and are only found on laptops.

 PCI – Peripheral Connect Interface wifi cards are designed for use in desktop computers, and will fit in any free PCI slot.

Mini PCI – Mini PCI cards are designed to fit internally into laptop computers, if you purchase a laptop with built in wireless this is the type that will be installed. 

Easiest, But Maybe Not best
The easiest type of network card to install is without question the USB type, it’s just a question of installing the software, plugging in the USB card when prompted and that’s it installed.

Installing PCI or Mini PCI network cards involves opening up your desktop or laptop computer to fit the card, and that’s even if the laptop can accept an internal card.

PCMCIA cards tend to be a thing of the past now, you can still get them, but it may only be older technology which we will cover later.

So the easiest way is to install USB right?

If you have no computer knowledge and would not know where to be begin taking the cover off a computer to install a card, then this is probably the way to go for you, but if your happy to remove the cover installing an internet wireless network card does have it’s advantages, for instance..

An internal network card does not tie up a USB port
Your don’t have to worry about disconnecting it, or knocking it, as USB card do stick out a bit

Unlike USB internal cards don’t put any load on the processor, plug in a wireless USB connector for a few hours and in conjunction with other applications and processes being run can increase the work load for the processor causing things to get a little warmer.

Technologies
There are a few wifi networking technologies around now, we have

802.11g - With transfer speeds of 54 mbps its currently the most popular wifi type

802.11b – Superseded largely now by 802.11g offering a network speed of 11mbps

802.11n & pre-n offering the next generation of wifi speeds up to 600mbps

Connecting

Now our computer has a wifi networking card, we need something to connect to, this is where a wireless router is needed. A wireless router shares an internet connection both wirelessly or via cabled connection.

To see all wireless networks in your area there are a number of ways to do this

You should get a Wifi network popup on the bottom right of your computer screen advising that there are Wireless networks once you click on this help popup you will be able to see all available Wifi networks.

Wireless Networking Guide

Another way is to double click on the network icon and then view wireless networks, or from the Start Menu > Control Panel > Network Connections > View Wireless Connections

Now your ready to connect, if you notice many of the wireless networks have small padlocks on them which means they are protected so you will need to have a passcode to be able to connect, if you click on one of these it will ask you for this.

Wireless Internet security has three settings

No security > WEP which is a secure type of network connection > or WPA which is the most secure of the three.

If our Wireless Networking Guide does not cover what your looking for checkout more of our other pages or please contact us

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