Kingdom Solutions

I was recently asked by a friend how to go about getting their laptop to go wireless. She had just bought a new laptop which had wireless capabilities, but wasn’t sure on how to connect it up. I thought that I would put the information here because others will probably find it useful.

Firstly, although you may have a laptop with wireless capabilities, you’ll need another “end” to communicate with. This usually means that you would have a wireless router somewhere in your house which your laptop would communicate with. There are other options popping up however, such as some cafes, restaurants or even airports are establishing wireless connectivity for their customers.

I’m assuming that you already have broadband connected at home, and would like to get a wireless connection to the Internet. You will already have a modem for your broadband and preferably you would have it connected to your desktop PC via Ethernet. The easiest way to check is to pull out the plug that goes into your PC and verify that the plug is clear plastic with a plastic tab on one side and eight pins on the opposite side of the plug. If you pull out the plug and it has a metal sleeve, this is a USB cable which will require more messing around unfortunately.

If everything is good, then the theory is that you would buy a wireless router, and you would disconnect the Ethernet to your PC and instead connect it to the router. Then you buy an additional Ethernet cable and connect it from the router to the PC. Your laptop will connect wirelessly to the router.

This information is only a very rough guide to give you an example of what would be required. To really do this properly, you would need some computer skills as you would need to configure the router in regards to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) configuration, and wireless security setup (so unauthorised people don’t get free access to your Internet connection).