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Accessing Your Wireless Network Jacksonville FL

Using a wireless network takes a number of components and some fairly critical thinking up front before allowing anyone to connect. You need tools to access a wireless network. You also need to be aware of the distances and transmission speeds you want to use in order to choose the correct technology. The article below discusses the components involved in setting-up and accessing your wireless network.

Local Companies

Silmar Electronics Inc
(904) 730-3350
5121 Bowden Rd Ste 104
Jacksonville, FL
Seaboard TV & Electronics
(904) 743-3477
1312 Cesery Blvd
Jacksonville, FL
Marvin's Electronics Inc
(904) 384-2514
933 Edgewood Ave S
Jacksonville, FL
DCS Electronics Inc
(904) 695-0556
655 Lane Ave N
Jacksonville, FL
Consumers Electronics Inc
(904) 771-7039
8725 Youngerman Ct Ste 104
Jacksonville, FL
Jimmy's Pawn Shop
(904) 249-9970
55 Sailfish Dr E
Atlantic Beach, FL
Mayport Hardware Inc
(904) 247-1200
1221 Mayport Rd
Atlantic Beach, FL
RadioShack
(904) 249-4615
403 Atlantic Blvd
Atlantic Beach, FL
21st Century Sound Inc
(904) 246-9881
1757 Ocean Grove Dr
Atlantic Beach, FL
Advance Auto Parts
(904) 247-1084
1051 Atlantic Blvd
Atlantic Beach, FL


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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.



Accessing Your Wireless Network
Using a wireless network takes a number of components and some fairly critical thinking up front before allowing anyone to connect. We discuss these components in the next few sections.
You need tools to access a wireless network. You also need to be aware of the distances and transmission speeds you want to use in order to choose the correct technology. To quickly summarize, there are a number of competing wireless standards to consider. Here is a chart showing the most popular standards:

Standard
802.11a - 54 Mbps speed in the 5 GHz band.
802.11b - 11 Mbps transmission in the 2.4 GHz band.
802.11g - 54 Mbps; remains backward-compatible with 802.11b.
802.15 - Personal Area Network standard. Bluetooth is the typical name.

Many other standards exist. To use them, your network card must support that standard, along with, of course, your wireless access point. After you add a wireless network card to your machine or PDA, you are off to the races and can enjoy mobility while remaining connected to your network.

Depending upon which wireless standard you use, your roaming can include your office floor or perhaps even the entire building, including part of your building’s parking lot.

Now that you are connected, it may occur to you that you need that degree of access in other locations. It’s catching, this freedom. To accomplish this, you need to extend the network or extend your ability to reach the current network.

One easy method to extend your range is to improve the antenna you use. Typically, your network card uses a small antenna either right in the card or, with a Centrino or AirPort chipset, somewhere within the computer. These work great for the typical distances involved in your wireless network but fall short of anything substantial. Adding a high-gain antenna to your computer or PDA significantly improves your ability to reach the network from far greater distances.

The alternate method is to extend your network using repeaters and additional access points. This is where planning is effective to ensure that you understand your needs before you start and then implement the technologies necessary to manage those needs.

Perhaps you want to ensure that all the buildings your business uses are connected on one seamless network using wireless frequencies. There are a couple of methods you can use for this, including some really advanced methods if your buildings are a great distance apart.

Connecting networks based in separate buildings leads to major benefits, such as users accessing necessary data residing in central resources crossing large open spaces (office complexes and university campuses, for example).

Two common methods for bridging this gap include point-to-point and multipoint LAN bridges. Using these techniques, your wireless network can expand from one room, to one building, to multiple buildings, to across a city. This is a complex implementation, however, and is not likely something the target SMB this book is designed for will use.

As the song indicates, we’re on the road again. We travel a lot, and getting access to our e-mail and office is essential. Most of the time, we gain access by using a local phone call to our network service provider and then using that access to cross over to our office and get connected.

For security purposes, Barry uses an encrypted tunnel to access his home office. After he’s connected, he can easily access all his machines and obtain whatever files he needs. This way, everything he does while connected is protected from prying eyes.

One thing that is changing is the reduced need to use a land-line-based service provider like AT&T Global Services. As hotels, airports, and coffee shops add wireless access hotspots, it gets easier and easier to connect. As the familiar advertising phrase goes, “Can you hear me now?” The answer, increasingly, is yes.

There are numerous utilities, like Boingo, that offer wireless access around the world in coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels. Getting connected while mobile is often simple. Boingo offers free software that finds wireless network hotspots and makes the connection for you. You pay a fee to Boingo to access any of their hotspots around the world.

One obvious need for mobile travelers is to retrieve their e-mail. Where would we be without it? This too is becoming simple. Years ago, Barry’s business associate would carry alligator clips and a long telephone cable with stripped wires at one end. This was so he could connect to telephone systems in foreign countries where data access was limited or not even considered. Although this has changed and almost every hotel telephone system allows and accommodates telephone modem access today, wireless is also beginning to intrude and become the norm. That certainly is easier than ripping wires out of a wall to get connected!

After you have access to the Internet using a wireless access point, obtaining your e-mail is trivial. It is still ideal to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) so that your e-mail and passwords are not traversing the network in clear text but traveling through an encrypted tunnel instead. This is even truer in the wireless world because those networks are vulnerable to anyone on the same network sniffing the traffic and seeing what you are up to at any given moment.

One other method involves using a PDA, such as the new Treo 600 or a Blackberry, to obtain e-mail. As data travels over the cell phone’s GPRS network, it is slightly less vulnerable than a Wi-Fi connection. It’s also very convenient: You merely turn on your device, connect to the local cell provider, and presto! You have mail!


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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.

Featured Local Company

Silmar Electronics Inc

(904) 730-3350
5121 Bowden Rd Ste 104
Jacksonville, FL

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