As I write this I’m working as part of a project team installing a large wireless network at a 100-plus-year-old prep school in the Adirondacks, and it was suggested that I write about wireless networking for home users, since I’ve never really approached that topic before.

So, here goes. You may not have a huge complex requiring dozens of access points to serve a large collection of different types of users, but you might benefit from a similar, although smaller scale, operation in your home.

Let’s start off simply. I’m going to try to hit the high spots and not get too deep into geek-speak.

First, just what is a network, anyway?

Simply, a network provides a way for one or more computers to "talk" to, or interact with, another device. The device could be another computer, or many other computers, or things such as printers or other types of devices.

Over the years there have been lots of different ways invented to do this, many of which have fallen by the wayside as time has marched on.

Historically, each device on a network would have a piece of hardware _ a network card _ which connects by wires to another device’s network card.

Over this wire, one device sends electronic signals to another device, which reads the signals and interprets them. This process, therefore, transfers information from one network "node" to another.

Some useful purpose is usually accomplished by the transfer of information.

Common examples of such transfers would be messages from one person to another, saving a file you create to a different computer, viewing Internet pages, and so forth.

By the way, if you’ve used the Internet, you’ve used a network. The mother of all networks, really.

If your home is one of those with more than one computer, as many are, having a home network allows you to share files between your computers, share printers, and if you have a router, all the computers can share one Internet connection.

These are real benefits, and make a network worthwhile if you have more than one computer.

Next, what’s a wireless network?

A ``wireless’’ network is a network that uses the technology of radio communication instead of wires.

Each node on the network has a little radio transmitter and receiver, and devices use certain radio frequencies to send the electronic signals back and forth, instead of sending them over wires.

So you can basically accomplish the same thing you did with a wired network, but without the wires.

What benefits could you get from a wireless network in your home, as opposed to a wired network? Well, you don’t have to run wires from one room to another. That’s the biggie. In some homes, that can make it a lot easier to create a network _ easier and less mess. Sometimes, it’s the only way a home network could get done at all, without bashing holes in the drywall.

Everybody knows that there are always two sides to every story, so what drawbacks could there be from such a wireless setup?

Drawback No. 1 would be that the radios involved don’t have much power. That means that they are limited in the distance their signals can travel.

Things like walls tend to absorb signal, so that before you know it, the signal can get too weak to be effective. A wired network can go about 300 feet before you have to worry about distance problems between nodes. So if you have a long distance to go, and/or several walls of dense material that the radio signal has to pass through, wireless might not work so well.

Another drawback could be a worry about privacy. If you use wires for your home network, chances are that a stranger won’t be hooking up to it without you being aware of it. If you are broadcasting radio signals, and if the signals are strong enough outside your home, a stranger could receive the signals too.

There are ways to encrypt your wireless transmissions, but if you don’t set the encryption up, you could be letting someone else in on all your little secrets, so to speak. Apartment dwellers, especially, should be aware of this, since apartments lie so close together, many times in range of wireless signals.

What do you need to set up a wireless network in your home?

First, you need a wireless network card in your computer.

Almost all notebook computers come with this feature built-in now. If you have a desktop computer, you will most likely have to buy and install one of these cards. They don’t cost much, and they are pretty easy to install, if you don’t mind opening up your computer and fiddling with it.

Next, you need a wireless access point of some type to act as a hub for all the computers to connect to, and enable them to talk to each other.

In today’s real world, almost everyone uses what’s known as a "wireless router" to perform this function. In addition to acting as a hub, the wireless router will also act as a gateway to the Internet, if you have a broadband Internet connection. By "broadband," I mean "always-on" as opposed to a dial-up connection.

Wireless routers and wireless network cards are readily available in office supply stores and other big retailers, and are not hard to set up.

The third step in setting up a network is, of course, connecting all the devices together. Normally you would have to run wires between everything. But since you are going to have a wireless network, you can conveniently skip this step... that’s the great thing about going wireless.

Bruce Endries is former systems manager at The Daily Star. He can be reached by e-mail at techgp@dailystarmail.com.