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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.Description: Over the last century the world has wrapped itself in wires and cables: telegraph cables, telephone cables, power cables, network cables.
Consider what lies behind the typical office desk. If you were to take a timelapse movie camera and travel back about a hundred years, you might see something like the following: At first there’d be a lone wire for a desk lamp, possibly accompanied by a second wire in the form of a telephone cord. After a while, an office intercom cable would appear, along with its associated power cord, followed shortly by another power cord or two for an electric typewriter and an adding machine. A multi-plug electrical outlet extender would also enter the picture at around the same time, from which would sprout the growing number of power cords that by this time have overwhelmed the existing wall socket. Snaking into the picture with increasing speed as you got closer and closer to the present, a whole bunch of other cables and cords would arrive to feed both electricity and information into an expanding desktop computer system. The last frame of this movie would show a hopelessly tangled Gordian knot of dust-encrusted cables and cords, looking very much like the one behind my desk, and perhaps behind yours, too.
If you would like to become a twenty-first century Alexander the Great and take a big whack at that tangled wire-and-dust knot, this article introduces you to your sword: Apple’s AirPort wireless network technology. Get ready to start swinging.
Arriving at the AirPortYou just took delivery of your shiny new iBook with its highly touted built-in wireless capability, and now you feel ready, and maybe even more than ready, to join the wireless generation. Only one problem remains: You don’t know where to begin. For that, I can offer you the words of wisdom spoken to me by a grizzled old programmer back in the days of punch cards and tape drives, words that remain as true today as they were then: It works better when you turn it on.
When you start up your Mac, a lot of stuff happens behind the gray Apple logo and spinning gear that you first see on the screen. One of the many things that the Mac does as it starts is look for a network connection — any network connection — and try to set that connection up. If your Mac has AirPort installed, this startup process may include looking for nearby wireless networks that your Mac can join. That is, it can look for wireless networks if your Mac’s AirPort is turned on.
You need a device known as an AirPort base station, or a similar wireless device, to create a wireless network, often called an AirPort network when you use an AirPort base station to create it. An AirPort base station contains a radio transmitter, which provides a network signal that AirPort can receive, and a receiver, to which AirPort can transmit.
Here’s how you can turn on your Mac’s AirPort capability:
1. Open the Internet Connect application.
You can find this application in your Applications folder. You can use Internet Connect to establish Internet connections various ways.
2. In the toolbar at the top of Internet Connect’s window, click AirPort.
The window displays the current state of your Mac’s AirPort.
3. Click Turn AirPort On.
What is this crazy thing you call a network?
You’re going to see the word network tossed around a lot in this article. If you feel at all hazy about what a network is, read on. Otherwise, you can skip this little sidebar.
A network refers a set of technologies that allow computers and other devices to transfer information back and forth between each other. For example, if you have a Mac connected to a network, and your spouse has a Mac connected to the same network, your Mac can exchange files with your spouse’s Mac, or can send it text messages or voice messages or video messages, and can help you engage in all sorts of collaborative activities.
Every device on a network has its own address: a number that uniquely identifies the device. No two devices on a network can have the same address or Bad Things happen; after all, the network uses addresses to route information to the right device.
All of the information zipping around the network comes in the form of packets: bite-sized chunks of digital information wrapped in a shell that, among other things, carries the address of the device that sent it and the address of the device to which it is going.
You may encounter two physical kinds of networks: wired networks, where every device on the network sends information to every other device over cables of some sort, and wireless networks, where the computers and other devices on the network use radio transmissions instead of wires to carry information. An AirPort network is a wireless network.
Networks can comprise both wired portions and wireless portions at the same time. For example, you can create a network in which, say, a printer connects to the network with cables, but the Macs on the network connect wirelessly. One of an AirPort base station’s many functions is to join the wired and wireless portions of a network so that it appears to be a seamless whole to the network’s users.
Now that you have turned on AirPort, you can try connecting to a nearby AirPort network, as described in the next section, “Making a first connection.”
Although your Mac can find and join nearby AirPort networks automatically, by default it does so only with networks to which you have previously connected your Mac. You can change these settings with your Mac’s Network Preferences, as described later in “Choosing how to connect to AirPort networks.”
When you turn AirPort on, it immediately scans the airwaves looking for available wireless networks. You can use Internet Connect to instruct your Mac to join one of those networks.
When you join an AirPort network, your Mac can use that network’s Internet connection if it has one. Most AirPort networks provide shared Internet access to the computers using the network.
Here’s how you join an AirPort network, using Internet Connect:
1. Open Internet Connect and click Turn AirPort On if your AirPort is off.
If you have just finished the procedure in the previous section, Internet
Connect should already be open and AirPort should already be turned on.
2. Click the Network pop-up menu.
You should see a list of the available AirPort networks within receiving range of your Mac. Of course, if you are not within range of any AirPort networks, no networks appear on this menu. If that’s the case, just read through the remaining steps and try them again when you find yourself in range of an AirPort network.
If you have a Mac laptop with AirPort, and aren’t connected to a wireless network yet, you might want to find a nearby wireless hotspot to use when trying out the procedures in this article.
3. On the Network pop-up menu, click the name of a network.
In many cases, after you perform this step, your Mac has joined the network, and you can begin working — or playing. Often, however, AirPort networks will require you to enter a password or other form of identity verification before your Mac can join the network. This process is called authentication, and it allows the network to restrict access to trusted individuals.
4. Type the network password in the Password field and click OK.
You can skip this step if the network you have selected does not require a password.
You can also skip this step the next time you join the same protected network if you click the check box labeled Remember Password in My Keychain before you click OK. When you set that option, your Mac records the network’s password securely in your keychain, a standard system feature that the Mac provides to store passwords and other sensitive information securely, freeing you from having to remember all the passwords you may need to use for various services and activities. The next time you attempt to join the protected network, your Mac retrieves the password from the keychain and uses it automatically.
That’s it. If you’ve successfully joined the network, Internet Connect indicates that fact in the window’s Status field. Internet Connect also shows you the strength of the network’s broadcast signal in the window’s Signal Level indicator, and gives the hardware address (also known as the MAC address) of the base station providing the network in the window’s Base Station ID field.
After you’ve connected your Mac to an AirPort network, you can quit Internet Connect. The application does not have to remain open in order for you to use the network connection.
You can avoid most future trips to Internet Connect by clicking the Show AirPort Status check box in Menu Bar window. This setting puts a status menu on your menu bar; the menu appears as an AirPort signal strength indicator so you can see, at a glance, how strong your network connection is. When you click the status menu, you see a list of available AirPort networks, as well as several other useful options.
You may be wondering about the Disconnect button in the lower-right corner of the Internet Connect window. This button appears when your Mac has joined an AirPort network. You click the Disconnect button to instruct the AirPort base station to close its Internet connection. When the AirPort base station doesn’t have an Internet connection, the button label changes to Connect, and, as you might expect, you click it to instruct the base station to create an Internet connection.
In order to hide the uninteresting complexities of wireless networking from its users, Mac OS X employs several strategies. For example, when you join an AirPort network for the first time, Mac OS X remembers that network: The next time your Mac comes within range of that network, Mac OS X joins that network again automatically. You can use the Network preferences window in your Mac’s System Preferences to change how your Mac joins wireless networks.
To get to the AirPort settings of your Mac’s Network preferences, follow these steps:
1. Open System Preferences.
You can click the System Preferences icon in your Dock, or choose System Preferences from your Apple menu.
2. In the System Preferences window, click the Network icon.
3. Click the Network window’s Show pop-up menu and choose AirPort.
Use the By Default, Join pop-up menu in the AirPort pane of the Network window in System Preferences to change how your Mac joins wireless networks.
You need to turn on your Mac’s AirPort before you can use the By Default, Join pop-up menu. When AirPort is turned off, this pop-up menu shows the current setting but does not allow you to click it.
Here are the two options that appear on the By Default, Join pop-up menu:
Automatic: With this setting, your Mac automatically joins any wireless network you’ve previously joined successfully whenever it detects that network. If two or more such networks are in range, your Mac joins the network that it joined most recently. If your Mac can find no previously joined wireless network in range, but does detect a nearby open network, your Mac presents a dialog asking you if you wish to join that network. Unless you or someone else has already tinkered with your Mac’s AirPort settings in Network preferences, the Automatic item on this menu is selected.
Wireless networks, including AirPort networks, can be open or closed. An open network broadcasts its name, allowing your Mac to display that network name in Internet Connect and in your AirPort status menu. A closed network does not broadcast its name, so your Mac can only join it if you both know that it exists, and you know its name.
Preferred Networks: Use this setting to specify the list of preferred networks your Mac will join.
The preferred networks list gives you control over which wireless networks your Mac joins:
+ button: Click this button to add networks to the preferred list manually.
– button: Click this button to remove selected networks from the list. You may want to use this button to remove networks that your Mac has added to the list, which it does whenever it joins a new wireless network. If you travel a lot, and use a lot of different wireless networks, this list can become lengthy.
Edit: Click this button to change the name of selected network in the list and to change the authentication method your Mac uses when it connects to that wireless network. This button can come in handy if, for example, a wireless network administrator changes the name of a network you regularly use: You can edit the network name in this list, and your Mac will connect to the renamed network the next time you come within its range.
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provided by:
For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.