Setup Procedure
In setting up a wireless network, a few things need to be planned before hand. It is necessary to consider networking addresses, other wireless networks, and wired networks.
First other wireless networks in the same area must be considered. It is necessary to determine if there are already wireless networks in your area to keep from interfering between the two. Breezenet requires an ID that will identify your network from others. They call this an ESSID. It is normally set to "essid1". This will work as is, but I would suggest a change to seperate your network and keep it one step more secure, because anyone wanting to connect to your access points would need to know the name of the network. A password can also be set to add to protection from unwanted users. Make sure that all ESSIDs are the same on all your equipment.
Second consider wether or not you will be conecting to a wired network. The wireless LAN devices use TCP/IP protocols for addressing. If you are conecting to a network, you will need specific IP addresses. If you do not know what you should use, check with your network administrator. The access point and station adapter should be assigned IP addresses, Subnet masks, and default gateways. (Contact your network administrator for this information.)
If you are not connected to an ouside network. you can use an IP address of 129.168.0.??? (These addresses are reserved for internal networks and will not interfere should you connect to the internet using a modem connection or other such intermitent connection.) the subnet mask should then be set to 255.255.255.0 and the gatewa address should be left alone.
Now that you have this information you can setup your wireless equipment. irst the access points should be setup. Connect anntenas, plug in ethernet (if connecting to a wired network), and power cord. next connect the cable provided to the access point and to a serial port on a win95 machine. Then open up hyperterminal and setup using information provided with equipment. or use setings as follows:
Current settings for establishing this connection are;
Bits per second : 9600
Data bits: 8
Parity: none
Stop bits: 1
Flow control: none
You will also need to determine which COM port is going to be used. Trial and error is a possible solution for this because there are only 4 possible COM ports (COM1-4).
Once settings are entered, hit the connect button on hyperterminal to establish a connection to the device. Once hyperterminal shows a connection in the lower lefthand corner, hit <enter> to display the menu. If the menu is not displayed try selecting another COM port. The menu is not automatocally displayed wonce you connect so remember to hit <enter> to display the menu.
Refer to manuals for setting up the access point from this point on. (I found the manual was not clear on how to establish a proper connection and then get the menu.)
Also remember to reset the access point to initialize the setup.
Next setup station adapters using the same procedure. Remember to connect the ethernet port on the station adapter to the ethernet port on your computer. Hyper terminal does not require a new setup for connecting to the station adapters.
The last thing setup should be the PCMCIA adapters. Follow the diretions for installing these devices.
Then setup the Windows 95 networking protocols that are necessary for your LAN. Contact your Network administrator for this information. It will be the same as for any other wired computer. There are no firewalls. The devices are tranparent to networking operations. The access point is not a router visible to the network.
Once you have gotten your wireless network running you will then want to place them around your building to cover your wireless computers.
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