Do You Need an AP to Network via Wireless?
A question I've been getting a lot lately from readers is, "Do you need an Access Point (AP) to network via Wi-Fi Wireless?"
Well, the short answer is you don't need an AP to connect (ad-hoc mode works fine for this), but the connection in and of itself doesn't buy you networking.
Here's a typical reader question and and a longer answer.
"I have a laptop and a PC, both with wireless cards. Now what I interpreted out of your book is that these clients can talk to each other, intuitively I did not think this was so, as I was under the understanding that it took an active AP (Access Point) in order for a wireless connection to be made.
"I followed your process in chapter 15 to configure the ad hoc network for both the laptop and the PC and yup, my luck it did not work. Well luck has nothing to do with it, it either has the capability or does not!!
"Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Signed -- Without Wireless Networking in Seattle
Dear Without Wireless:
First, you may be interested in an updated version of my chapter with the Wi-Fi configuration instructions (including ad-hoc mode). It is available for free download on the Wi-Fi area of Braintique.com.
Second, in theory your two computers with wireless connection should be able to "talk" with each other in ad-hoc mode, although (based on response from my readers) sometimes this seems very hard to set up. The most obvious gotchas here (and there may be others):
- The cards need to speak the same flavor (e.g., 802.11a may not talk to 802.11g)
- The cards need to be set to the same station
- Station settings terms of encryption need to be the same on both cards
Next, realize the following limitation: you won't be able to network two computers by virtue of wirelessly connecting them anymore than if you simply connected them by USB or Ethernet ports.
It takes more than a connection to make for networking, you need a router, or a computer set up as a server, or P2P networking software on both machines, and you need to make sure the computers are set to share with each other, are part of the same workgroup, etc.
Generally, if they don't network by wire, there's no reason to expect them to network wirelessly, even if they connect.
Just to reiterate, you don't need an Access Point to connect two machines wirelessly (using ad-hoc), but you do need networking hardware and software (most Access Points provide built-in routers, which takes care of this).
A practical use for ad-hoc connectivity: Suppose you have a wire line network that uses a router to interface with the Internet (the so-called WAN connection). Let's say you have a laptop with wireless capability, and a wireless USB connector for a computer on your network. You could then set up ad-hoc networking via the wireless connection to allow you to connect to the Internet from the wireless laptop.
Posted by Harold Davis at April 8, 2005 02:45 PM
