BePortable is the ultimate laptop utility for Zeta, when it comes
to running system wirelessly and monitoring your battery status.
Setting up access to a wireless network in Zeta is some what difficult,
but with BePortable it becomes a joy! In this article, we'll look
at some common steps for setting up an 802.11b PCMCIA card on a
Zeta laptop, provide a general guide to preparing to set up wireless
support.
It's important to keep in mind that since support for the assorted
families of 802.11b chipsets in use and available off the shelf
is varied and handled by different developers in the BeOS community,
deciding which hardware to purchase isn't quite as simple a matter
as it is for Windows users: Not all cards are supported and not
all driver implementations are created equal.
The most robust support for wireless PCMCIA under Zeta exists for
the Lucent Wavelan chipset. These cards are carried under a variety
of names, including the popular Orinoco line. Excellent support
also exists for the Intersil Prism2, 2.5 and 3 chipsets.
You will need to obtain some information from your Access Point.
The Description can be the same as Network name (SSID).
yellowTAB would in most recommend you to enter descriptions like:
Home, School, Work and Coffee Bar.
A standard Wireless network (802.11) operate in one of two modes
- ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) or infrastructure mode. The ad-hoc mode
is defined as Independent BBS (IBBS), and the infrastructure
mode as a BBS. A Basic Service Set (BBS) is formed when two
or more stations have recognized each other and established a network.
If you are trying to connect to an access point in a network (BBS),
you will also have to set the Channel that that specific
access point is working on.
In ad-hoc mode, each client communicates directly with the other
clients within the network. This mode was designed such that only
the clients within transmission range of each other can communicate.
If a client in ad-hoc network wished to communicate outside of the
range, one of the clients (members) must operate as a gateway and
performing routing. In infrastructure mode, each station sends its
communications to a central station, which is the Access Point.
The access point acts as an Ethernet bridge and forwards the communications
onto the network - either wired network, or the Wireless Network.
WEP encryption
BePortable has a Client Encryption Manager (CEM) that enables
you to set up to four encryption keys, called Wired Equivalent Privacy
(WEP) keys. WEP is an optional IEEE 802.11 feature that provides
your client adapter and other devices on your wireless network with
data confidentiality equivalent to that of a wired LAN. It involves
packet-by-packet data encryption by the transmitting device and
decryption by the receiving device. By default ecryption is turned
off in Zeta, but we encourage you to protect your data as much as
possible.
WEP keys are either 40- or 128-bit hexadecimal values. 128-bit
WEP keys contain more characters than 40-bit keys and, therefore,
offer a greater level of security. The client adapter's WEP key
must match the WEP key used by the access points or clients with
which you are planning to communicate because it can communicate
only with devices that have a matching WEP key. 128-bit client adapters
can use 40- or 128-bit keys, but 40-bit adapters can use only 40-bit
keys.
Be sure to set up the Network also. The
Wireless LAN requires Network settings to work properly.
BePortable supports multiple Wireless settings
The whole point with laptops is to use them on various networks,
in this window you can manage the Access points that you
are using:

Making your configurations apply
With the application you can Add, Edit and Delete
access point. Enabling Restart on apply will for the time
being restart the machine. This is not normal, but the hfa driver
currently doesn't let it self reload in other ways then by rebooting.
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