Is your PC ready for wireless networking?

Here’s how to find out whether your PC has what it takes to set up a wireless network:

1. The first thing to check is how your computer connects to the Internet. If you’re on a broadband connection that’s on all the time and you don’t need to dial out to connect to the Internet, you’ll need to check whether you have a broadband modem or a broadband router.
2. Check with your Internet Service Provider about whether they supplied you with it. Failing that, try typing in the make and model number into a search engine to find out what it is. If it’s a router, then it may be a wireless router.
3. Next you need to check out your PC to see if it is wireless-network capable. If you look in Control Panel under ‘Network and Internet Connections,’ you can see whether there is any kind of wireless adapter installed.
4. If you have a wireless-enabled router and a wireless-enabled PC, you’re good to go! You should be OK using the automatic detect settings. If you do need to set a static IP address, choose something like 192.168.1.5 and set the default gateway to 192.168.1.1 and the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0

Note that if your computer doesn’t already have a wireless network adapter built-in, you’ll need to install one for each system that connects to the network.