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Dialup Network (PPP and PPPoE) Network Services Stand-Alone Network Getting your wifi card to work

Alert!
Various aspects of wireless networking have made their way in to international news, including strange tales of WarChalking, WarDriving, and Pringles - www.securityfocus.com

Recommened Book
If you are interested in learning more about how to set up a secure wireless network, yellowTAB recommends you buying a book about wireless networks.

BePortable - Laptop Software

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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