Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 10
Putting Your Wireless Home
Network to Work
In This Chapter
� Checking out the network
� Sharing files with other computers in Windows XP
� Sharing printers and other peripherals in Windows XP
� Securing your network through sensible sharing in Windows XP
� Sharing a new way with Windows Vista
� Exploring Mac-friendly sharing
Remember that old Cracker Jack commercial of the guy sitting in the bed
when the kid comes home from school? “What did you learn in school
today?” he asks. “Sharing,” says the kid. And then, out of either guilt or good
manners, the old guy shares his sole box of caramel popcorn with the kid.
You shouldn’t hog your caramel popcorn, and you shouldn’t hog your network
resources, either. We’re going to help you share your Cracker Jacks now!
(After all, that’s kinda the purpose of the network, right?) You have a wireless
network installed. It’s secure. It’s connected. Now you can share all sorts of
stuff with others in your family — not just your Internet connection but also
printers, faxes, extra disk space, Telephony Application Programming
Interface (TAPI) devices (telephone-to-computer interfaces and vice versa for
everybody else), games, and A/V controls — oodles and oodles of devices.
In this chapter, we give you a taste of how you can put your wireless network
to work. We talk about accessing shared network resources, setting up user
profiles, accessing peripheral devices across the network (such as network
printing), checking out network shares on other PCs, and other such goodies.
Entire books have been written about sharing your network. Home
Networking For Dummies, 4th Edition (by Kathy Ivens), Mac OS X All-in-One
Desk Reference For Dummies (by Mark L. Chambers, Erick Tejkowski, and
Michael L. Williams), Windows XP For Dummies, 2nd Edition (by Andy