Re: WiFi connections and management - Hotspots and Home LANs

At 27 Feb 2008 16:11:07 +1100 Snapper wrote:

One of the settings that I had to change was on the wireless network
adaptor. I changed it to "server assigned" settings, indicating that the
wireless network was a DHCP enabled one. My home network is based on fixed
IP addresses and fixed DNS server addresses.

When I got home I had to go through the rigmarole of reconfiguring it back
onto my home LAN.

How do people go about changing their settings on the fly so that each
time they connect to different hotspots or networks that the PDA
automatically is assigned the correct settings? Presumably each airport or
Starbucks or McDonalds or whatever which offers wifi hotspots all have
different settings.


The "zero-config" wireless on WinMo devices works quite well IF all the
networks you connect to use DHCP. Unfortunately, unless you use it at
home, you'll constantly have to switch between fixed IP and server assigned-
I know of no workaround.


It would be a pain if you had to go in and change things every time you
wanted to connect to a different network, particularly for users of these
devices who aren't computer or network literate.


Catch-22- the non-"literate" generally don't use static IPs on home networks,
so it's not usually a problem. Generally, "public" WiFi networks
(restaurants, hotels, airports, etc.) are all DHCP.

FWIW, frustrations like yours convinced me to leave my home network set up
as DHCP rather than use fixed IPs. I typically use my Windows Mobile
device more than PC, so I decided to work around it's limitations.

Exploring Local Network Resources

Under file explorer there is an option "open path". I've used this at home
to connect to and browse hard disks on my computers that are connected to
the network. I tried this on this particular network. That is until I
discovered that it doesn't offer the ability to search for available
resources.


Correct. WinMo can't search for other computers- they must be specifically
entered. Also, you can't browse the WinMo device from other PCs on the
network. Copying files to/from the mobile device over the network has to
be done from the device, Not a PC.

I'd like to do this on my own network as I had to go and write down the
names of the computers and their hard disk names in order to browse them
on the PDA. Thing is, it doesn't accept wildcards nor does it offer to do
a search like what you do in My Network Places on a desktop/laptop
computer.


Correct.

Is there any way of doing this on a Pocket PC/Windows Mobile PDA?

If there is, it would have to be via 3rd party software. I'm unaware of
any that do this.

Total Commander, a freeware file manager, at least lets you save share
names for ease of reopening them later, as opposed to the native File
Explorer which just saves a few recently-opened shares.



.