Wireless Home Networking for Dummies

387 Pages·2003·7.1 MB·English

by  Danny Briere, Walter R. Bruce III, Pat Hurley

Wireless Home
Networking
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
by Danny Briere,Walter R.Bruce III,
and Pat Hurley

Wireless Home
Networking
FOR
DUMmIES
‰

Wireless Home
Networking
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
by Danny Briere,Walter R.Bruce III,
and Pat Hurley
Wireless Home Networking For Dummies®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
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New York, NY 10022
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2003 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
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About the Authors
Danny Brierefounded TeleChoice, Inc., a telecommunications consulting
company, in 1985 and now serves as CEO of the company. Widely known
throughout the telecommunications and networking industry, Danny has
written more than 1,000 articles about telecommunications topics and has
authored or edited eight books, including Internet Telephony For Dummies,
Smart Homes For Dummies, 2nd Edition, andHome Theater For Dummies. He
is frequently quoted by leading publications on telecommunications and
technology topics and can often be seen on major TV networks providing
analysis on the latest communications news and breakthroughs. Danny lives
in Mansfield Center, Connecticut, with his wife and four children.
Walter R. Bruce IIIis a writer and consultant who is an avid wireless network
user and who has been programming and using computers since the late 1960s
(that’s right, he’s old). For more than a dozen years, Walter has been training
computer users and writing and publishing books about computer technology.
He has written many internationally published books on a variety of computer
operating system, database, telecommunication, and networking topics. As a
publishing professional, he has also directed the publication of hundreds of
computer-related books for three successful publishing companies. Walter
holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics as well as a law degree. Walter
installed his first network in 1985 in the Pentagon while working for the Judge
Advocate General of the United States Air Force. He was practicing law in the
USAF when he discovered his affinity for teaching people how to use comput-
ers. For several years, he has directed Novell Press, the official publisher of
books about Novell networking technology. Walter currently lives with his
family in the Silicon Valley area of northern California.
Pat Hurley is a consultant with TeleChoice, Inc., specializing in emerging
telecommunications technologies including all the latest access and home
technologies: wireless LANs, DSL, cable modems, satellite services, and home
networking services. Pat frequently consults with the leading telecommunica-
tions carriers, equipment vendors, consumer goods manufacturers, and
other players in the telecommunications and consumer electronics indus-
tries. Pat is the co-author of Internet Telephony For Dummies, Smart Homes
For Dummies, 2nd Edition, andHome Theater For Dummies. He lives in San
Diego, California, with his wife and two smelly dogs.
Dedication
To Mom and Dad, you’ve always been there for us. We can’t thank you
enough.
—Walt
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Danny wants to thank his wife, Holly, and kids, for their infinite patience while
he and Pat wrestled with this book toward the finish line. He agrees that the
wireless Webcam in the shower was not a good idea. (Just kidding.) He also
wants to thank his sister, Michelle, for all her hard work over the years that
has made it possible to continue to survive in this crazy business environ-
ment — we could not have made it without her. He also wants to note that he
got his pot rack (see Smart Homes for Dummies,2nd Edition for details). Now
if we can only talk her into the 42-inch Samsung HDTV that he wants.
Walt would like to thank all the staff at Wiley for the incredible hours of work
that go into the publication of every book — especially this one. There are
many people whose work is essential to each book’s publication but who
seem to go unnoticed and unthanked. So let me say thank you to Andy
Cummings, to Melody Layne for having the confidence in us to write this
book, and to Nicole Sholly for her invaluable project management. Thanks
also to Teresa Artman for her crisp copy editing, to Michael Williams for his
invaluable technical review, and to all the unnamed people at Wiley who buy
the paper, hire the printer, design and produce the cover, hire and manage
the proofreader and indexer, design and implement marketing plans and pro-
motions, sell the book to the retailer, pay the bills (especially the royalties),
and perform all the other unnamed but still necessary tasks to keep a major
publisher in business. Finally, I want to thank my family — Terry, Rich, Rob,
Heather, Heidi, Monty, and Tahj (yes, I have a big family) — for putting up
with me for all these years. You’re the greatest.
Pat, as always, thanks his wife, Christine, for providing her impeccable “Can
Iwrite this wisecrack and not get in trouble?” judgment, and for her ability to
restrain her desire to knock him over the head with a big frying pan when
deadlines and late-night writing intrude on the domestic tranquility. He also
wants to thank her for letting him hog the computers andthe sofa while
writing.
Danny and Pat want to thank the following people and organizations for their
support in writing this book: Jeff Denenholz at X10 who has been a huge sup-
porter for all our books (buy X10 stuff so that Jeff looks good); Doug Fay at
ConnectPR for Siemens/Efficient Networks and D’Andre Ladson at
Siemens/Efficient Networks; Doug Hagan at NETGEAR; Fred Bargetzi at
Crestron; Shawn Gusz at G-NET Canada (still waiting to try Auroras in our
cars!); Karen Sohl at Linksys; Keith Smith at Siemon; Mark Shapiro at Davis
Marin for Proxim/ORiNOCO; Michael Scott at D-Link; Brad Kayton at Prismiq
(best of luck with the venture!); Bryan McLeod at Intrigue Technologies; Craig
Slawson at CorAccess (good luck too!); and others who helped get content
correct for the readers.
Really extra special thanks go to Ed Ferris, IT Manager at TeleChoice, who by
all rights should have been a co-author on this book (and only wasn’t
because the covers had already printed) for all the process and technical
editing that he performed on the book. Ed, you’ll be on the cover next edition
if we have any say in the matter.
Thanks also to our acquisition editor, Melody Layne, who by now knows
every product that will be wirelessly enabled from here to eternity, and to
our project editor, Nicole Sholly, who probably hates being an editor at this
point but nonetheless let us rant about the problems when they occurred
(which they did constantly, continually, and drastically). Melody was a true
champ keeping her faith up in Pat and Danny while they continually rewrote
text in this book to make it more accurate and timely.