Tonight’s
session was going to be a practical session. I had been able to borrow from one
of my schools a set of 8 netbooks. Netbooks are obviously ideal for this kind
of practical session, as they take up very little space in the back of my car!
Which makes all the difference when it comes to the location of our classroom,
on the top floor of the school!
In
the past we have done a similar exercise, but using network cables, and
creating a wired network. For tonight’s class I thought it would be good to set
up a wireless network.
The
first thing we did was have a look at the settings of the wireless router.
Logging into the router via it’s IP Address in a browser window, we were able
to view all of the settings. Under the wireless settings section, we were
mainly concerned with the following three items.
- SSID name
- Encrytion Type
- Encrypted Password
The
SSID is reffered to as a network name because it is a name that identifies a
wireless network. Many these days by default will be have some reference to the
ISP being used, perhaps BT, Sky or Virgin Media, or the manufacturer such as
Linksys or Dlink. You can use any name you like, although personally I would
suggest something non-descript that doesn’t tend to identify you. Our class router had the name ‘Pickled
Onions’. Why not??
The
Encryption type, is the security encryption used to connect wireless devices to
it. There are various different types including WEP, WPA and WPA2. Most of us will be using the encryption
protocol WPA2. It is the stronger of the aforementioned protocols.
The
encrypted password is a password that meets the requirements of the chosen
encryption method. I would suggest that you set a strong password for this,
making it difficult for anyone to guess what it is. A strong password is made
up of numbers and letters, sometimes symbols, and it is quite common to
substitute numbers for letters in a password such as P4SSW0RD. A mixture of
lowercase and uppercase letters combine to make an even tougher p4sSw0Rd. Get the idea? Remember, with this code,
anyone can connect to your wireless network, and not only steal your bandwidth,
but potentially access your files, so do not disclose this password to anyone.
After
handing out the netbooks, the first thing I needed the class to do was to
create System Restore ‘save points’.
This would allow us to roll the machines back to how they were at the
end of the class, undoing any change anyone would have made during the class.
The
next thing I instructed the class to do, was to give each of their netbooks a
unique name. You cannot have two computers with the same name on the same
network – it causes a conflict.
 |
| The icon with the two people in it, denotes that the folder is shared in Windows 7 (in other words it's available to many people). In Windows XP the folder that is shared, is represented with a 'hand' under the folder. |
Each
of the students were able to successfully connect their netbooks to my wireless
router, however there seemed to be a problem when it came to accessing shares,
on each of the machines. This was just my luck….one can never plan for when
things don’t go to plan! I salvaged the best of a bad scenario by linking my
own laptop directly to the wireless hub with a cable, and as a group we were
able to successfully access the folder from which I had shared, and copy and
create documents within it. We then finished off the session by talking about
‘exclusive’ access to files, to stop things being overwritten.
Further
reading on the subject of setting up Windows for networking can be found in the
recommended class textbooks. Whichever one is applicable to your operating
system.
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