Complete home wireless networking - Paul Heltzel

This book offers tips and tricks for finding the best equipment for your home networking project and then walks you through the wireless network setup that's right for you. The wireless market is expanding quickly. New standards, including high-speed 802.11a, and the emergence of other "no-new-wires" technologies, such as powerline, are making the home networking market a slightly confusing one for consumers. Connecting and using interoperable equipment from vendors including Linksys, Netgear, Intel, D-Link, and Proxim, among others, can be a genuine plug-and-play experience. Or it can lead to several days, or more, of confusing hang-ups. There are pitfalls to be sure, but they can be avoided with a little planning. This book can help. Looking toward the future, there are a host of new wireless standards coming out in the next two years. Should you wait for faster technology or jump in now? There are some ingenious ways being developed by manufacturers to make interoperable technologies work together (dual-mode wireless access points, for instance, that work with 802.11a and 802.11b), and you can always upgrade later. In a word, "jump."

PAUL HELTZEL has written extensively on wireless technology, the Internet, and network computing for magazines and Web sites including PC World, Business 2.0 and CNN Interactive. During the late 1990s, he created Web sites for the Discovery Channel, MCI, and Discover Card. He then served as a reporter and editor for PC World in San Francisco. He has contributed articles on technology to the Washington Post, MIT Technology Review, and the New York Times on the Web. He lives in New Orleans, where he serves as an adjunct instructor in the Media Arts department of Tulane's University College This is his seventh book.