Re: Need help using a wireless printer

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I agree with LEM. If you connect your computer directly to a broadband
connection (e.g. cable or DSL modem), your computer(s) could be vulnerable
to attacks from the Internet unless you are quite careful.

A "router" is not very expensive and is a good investment - "wireless"
routers tend to be a bit more expensive. "Routers" designed for home use
include firewall type capabilities, DHCP service, DNS forwarding, Network
Address Transalation as well as the basic "routing" function.

If you want, you could still use your motherboard wireless feature as a
wireless access point instead of using a "wireless" router. You can use
Windows XP's Internet Connection Sharing to allow wireless connected
computers to access the Internet through the wired connection to the router
(from your computer that has the wireless capable motherboard).

--
Bruce Sanderson MVP
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/
It's perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.


<mohead@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1164137619.143775.191950@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lem wrote:
mohead@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Chuck wrote:
If you are going to broadband, and have no current home network, it
would be
much simpler to wait until you have a broadband modem and router.
Otherwise
you will end up undoing whatever you do now, and complicate the
broadband
setup. If you have the router, or a modem router, in theory, you
could
setup the "LAN" side now, and the internet side when the broadband
connection is installed and operational.
It's not really a good idea to setup a computer as an access point,
due to
security considerations, unless you want to turn it into a server.

Thanks Chuck. Last night, I set up the network using the mobo's setup
utility and it let me complete it without the broadband connection. My
wife had to print something off, so I really had to get this thing set
up. The printer detected the network and I got it running fairly
quickly. The wizard I was using before wouldn't let me past the
internet connection step and had me stumped. It looks like it won't be
a problem to add the internet connection after the fact using the
utility.

Could you explain why it's not a good idea to use the computer as an
access point? I have encrypted the network.

Thanks,

-Trent


I'm not sure what you mean by a "soft access point." Most likely, what
you have done is create an "ad hoc wireless network." There is nothing
intrinsically "wrong" about doing this, except that IIRC, for ad hoc
connections, you can only use WEP to encrypt the wireless communication
link, and WEP is more vulnerable than WPA or WPA2.

Lem, what I have is a computer with on-board Wi-fi (motherboard: M2N-32
SLI Wireless Edition) and it is designed to be used as an access point.
When I ordered it, I thought I would have to buy a router too, but one
of the selling points of the motherboard is that it saves you the extra
expense of an access point. I am starting to understand the difference
between a router and an access point, though it's still a bit fuzzy.

While setting up the network, I had to specify which type I wanted. The
choices were Soft AP, Infrastructure and Ad hoc. Infrastructure is used
when you have a separate router and you are joining an existing network
through that router.

I chose Soft AP and I can support up to 64 devices. I encrypted it
using WPA-PSK. I think it's called a software access point because the
computer and access point are one and the same.

For right now, I'll keep things as they are, but the router seems to be
an even better way to go and I will probably get one once my DSL is up
and running.

Thanks,

-Trent



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