Thread: Connecting your home without A Router

Connecting your home with the standard configuration is quite simple. There are three basic steps involved in this. First you need to ensure that all the systems are WiFi compatible (buy a WLAN card for your desktop, if you need to). After you have cleared this hurdle, you need to configure it as a computer-tocomputer (ad-hoc) network. Lastly, comes the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) part.

Getting your computer WiFienabled is really simple. You need to plugin a Wireless network card, which is available in two forms---one a USB kind which you just plug and play, and the other which you need to fix into your PCI slot on your motherboard. Most laptops are WiFi enabled, so no work needed there.

In order to proceed with setting up the network, you need to configure one computer as the host and others as the client. We will start with the host computer. Click on the icon in your system tray to view available wireless connections. You may see some wireless networks from your neighbourhood, in the list. Do not select any yet.



Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections. Right-click on your wireless network adapter and click on Properties. Select the Wireless Network Tab.
Click on Advanced on th,.e bottom right. Select the option forcomputer-to-computer (adhoc) networks only.

Our next step is to christen our ad-hoc network so that all users can log on to it. To do this, click on Add in the same dialog box. You need to enter a name for your ad-hoc network-called a Service Set Identifier (SSID) which is nothing but a name for your network.

To prevent abuse of your ad-hoc network, it is always wise to use the network authentication and data encryption features. Nevertheless, in this scenario, you are still safe even of you leave Network Authentication as Open-this setting has more relevance if you're setting up a more permanent network. Once you enter in these details, click OK and you are done with the host computer.