{"id":818,"date":"2021-09-21T14:18:20","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T14:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/?page_id=818"},"modified":"2022-04-26T16:59:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T16:59:54","slug":"no-access-point-setup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/no-access-point-setup\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I Really Need an Access Point?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’re happy with your Ethernet-based LAN in general, and all you’d like to do is add a wireless laptop to it.\u00a0 Do you have to spring for the big bucks and buy an Access Point<\/a> to connect it in?<\/p>\n

The answer is\u00a0No<\/b>, but you may want to anyway.\u00a0 The explanation follows…<\/p>\n

An Access Point acts as a\u00a0bridge<\/b><\/a>, connecting whatever is on either side of it into the same subnet.\u00a0 In simple terms, this means that not only will you be able to access Internet services (assuming you’ve already got some sort of Internet sharing set up on your Ethernet LAN), but File and Printer sharing will also work.<\/p>\n

If you go the cheaper route, you’ll need to install a wireless card into a desktop machine on your LAN, then install some sort of sharing software like ICS, Wingate, Sygate, etc. on that machine.\u00a0 All these products, however, are\u00a0routers<\/a><\/b>, not bridges.\u00a0 They will put your wireless client into its own subnet and although Internet services should work just fine, you won’t be able to File and Printer share unless you set up LMHOST files on all machines on your network.\u00a0 Even then, the Network Neighborhood (or Network Places) browser won’t automatically find the machines on different subnets.\u00a0 This is explained more on\u00a0this page<\/a><\/b>\u00a0from our MMR HowTo.<\/p>\n

So, easier and more expensive, or harder and cheaper.\u00a0 In this case you really do pays your money and takes your choice!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’re happy with your Ethernet-based LAN in general, and all you’d like to do is add a wireless laptop to it.\u00a0 Do you have to spring for the big bucks and buy an Access Point to connect it in? The answer is\u00a0No, but you may want to anyway.\u00a0 The explanation follows… An Access Point acts as a\u00a0bridge, connecting whatever is on either side of it into the same subnet.\u00a0 In simple terms, this means that not only will you be able to access Internet services (assuming you’ve already got some sort of Internet sharing set up on your Ethernet LAN), <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5541,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/5541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.practicallynetworked.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}