How to assemble wireless Internet access on a computer

It is common to have a laptop on a desktop in a home. Many friends try to build a small wireless WLAN and connect to the Internet. Now we will introduce how to set up wireless Internet access on two computers.

I have an existing desktop in my home and have connected to the Internet through ADSL Modem + Nic. Recently, I have added a laptop. How to make this laptop surfing the Internet makes me a big headache.

The most direct and efficient solution is to purchase a wireless router that supports both wired and wireless Internet access, but the price of a wireless router is high.

I accidentally discovered the newly added Bridge Function in Windows XP. Bridge should be an old concept. The bridge is like a switch with only two ports and can connect two physical network segments. A typical hardware bridge is actually a computer that contains CPU, memory, and two network interfaces. Windows XP only uses software to simulate the hardware bridge function. Using the bridge function, I only need to add a wireless network card on the original desktop to enable point-to-point communication with the wireless network card of the laptop, then, you can set the wired and wireless network interfaces on the desktop as bridges to connect the wired network and the Wireless Network Bridges to achieve wireless Internet access for the laptop.

Currently, almost all wireless network adapters sold on the market use the IEEE 802.11b standard, supporting peer-to-peer network Ad Hoc between the network adapter and the infrastructure network between the network adapter and the access device) two connection modes, and the price of some brands of wireless network cards has been reduced to less than 200 yuan.

The first step for wireless Internet access between the two computers is to buy a wireless network card. After the desktop is installed, the "wireless network connection" icon appears in the "Lan or high-speed Internet" project of the control panel.

Step 2: Install the management tool that comes with the wireless network card and set the connection parameters. Although the interfaces of the management tools for wireless NICs are different, the configuration items are basically the same. The main configuration items include network mode, domain name SSID), transmission rate, and channel. Because there is no access device, only two wireless NICs need to communicate with each other, so the network mode can be set to peer network mode, and the domain names and channels of the two wireless NICs must be consistent, the transmission rate adopts the automatic mode. Generally, after setting the above items, use the search function Survey in the management tool to find the other computer.

Step 3: create a bridge. Select "Local Connection" and "wireless network connection" under "Lan or high-speed Internet", right-click, and select "bridge" in the pop-up menu ", the system automatically creates a Network Bridge and transfers the original two connections to the newly created network bridge project ).

Step 4: Set the IP address, gateway address, and DNS server address on the wireless network card of the laptop and the bridge of the desktop. Because ADSL Modem generally has a built-in IP address, you need to allocate an IP address in the same CIDR block to the two computers. The gateway address is the IP address built in ADSL Modem, the DNS server address still uses the address provided by the Telecommunications Department when broadband is installed.

Everything is ready. Pick up your laptop and enjoy wireless Internet access at any location in the room with an area of 90 m² square meters. Of course, due to the signal strength of the wireless network card itself, the signal is weak when the distance is relatively long. After a simple download test, the network ant will be used, the fastest download speed is generally 70 KB ~ 80 KB, the minimum signal is about 15 KB per second.

The biggest problem with this wireless Internet access method is that you need to enable the desktop at the same time when accessing the laptop. In addition, the author found that because the bridge had to wait for a complete frame to receive and verify the correct frame for data Frame Forwarding, so the configuration is not very high on the computer, the speed of accessing the Internet is a little slower than that of using a software agent. However, if this method is better, you do not need to install additional software and hardware, and the configuration is simple, for users who often need to use laptops for wireless Internet access, this connection method is still very economical and convenient.