- [Instructor] A wireless access point, or a WAP,
is a device that allows network connectivity using Wi-Fi.
And so, a wireless access point
enables the data communications over the air, so to speak,
if your computer is equipped
with a wireless networking adapter.
So your desktop PC, your laptop, your Mac computer,
your mobile device,
doesn't matter what computer you're working with,
has to have a Wi-Fi connection.
Commonly used standards include the IEEE 802.11x standards.
And I use x as a variable, which could be b, g, n, or ac.
Now, b networks are old, slow, deprecated, outdated.
If you see one of these, you gotta upgrade the system.
You gotta put in a new wireless adapter of some sort.
So let's say we had a laptop that could only connect
via 802.11b, which is limited to, like,
11 megabits per second or something.
Super slow. You can't even watch a video with that.
And that's kind of the bar.
That's kind of the line that I draw.
Can you watch video with your computer?
If you can't, then we probably need to upgrade
your wireless connection.
Can you watch a video on YouTube?
A how-to video or something like that?
If not, need to upgrade you to either g,
which is 54 megabits per second or 108,
n, which is 300 or 600 megabits per second,
and ac, which goes way past that into the gigabit range.
So you wanna have the fastest connection possible,
and Wi-Fi cards are not that expensive.
These wireless access points transmit the data
over radio waves using these standards.
And that's either gonna be on the 2.4 gigahertz
or the 5 gigahertz frequency.
Or frequency range, because they use multiple channels,
by the way.
And the newer the wireless standard,
the more likely you'll use 5 gigahertz.
Let's illustrate a typical wireless connection
to a wireless access point.
Here, we have a laptop.
And like I said before, let's say the laptop
has a real slow built-in Wi-Fi connection.
We could add another connection.
We could connect a USB connection,
perhaps an express card connection,
or maybe even change out the internal card.
Maybe you could change out the mini PCI
or mini PCI Express on the laptop.
And let's say we put in an external USB connector,
an N wireless network adapter.
That'll make it a lot faster.
We can get to that 300 or 600 megabit range,
and then we can watch those videos
that I found so important just before.
Gotta be able to watch those videos.
So that laptop's gonna make a connection
to the wireless access point,
which quite often is either a standalone device
or is built into your 4 port or SOHO router.
And so, here's the wireless access point.
And each wireless access point gets a name, an SSID.
That's its network name.
And the SSID is what the laptop or other computer
will look for when connecting.
It needs to know this name
to be able to automatically connect.
And the name of this one just happens to be Wireless1.
The standard being used is 802.11n.
So this one will be compliant,
it'll be able to make an n speed connection.
And again, that could be on 2.4 gigahertz or 5 gigahertz,
that depends on how you configure it.
For this particular access point, it's 2.4 gigahertz.
How do I know? Because of the channel range.
If you have a channel range between 1 and 11,
we know it's on the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum.
And the encryption being used, really important, WPA2.
And we'll show more about that in a second.
So this is just a basic illustration of a connection
between a laptop, or any computer really,
and a wireless access point.
And if your computer has a real slow connection,
consider upgrading it either by adding an adapter card
or by adding an external USB device.
Now, let's show an actual connection.
I'm in Windows 7.
We'll go to the Network and Sharing Center.
And you can see, here's the computer.
And here's the internet, here's where I wanna get to.
And here's a red X.
Well, that's no good. (chuckles)
We don't wanna red X.
We don't wanna break in the line here.
We wanna connection.
We have an unidentified network.
Well, what's happening here?
Who knows. Could be a lot of different things.
Actually, I'm lying to you. I know.
The problem is that the wireless adapter is disabled.
And that's one of the first things you can always check.
Go to your Device Manager and check your wireless adapter.
In this case, I have a TP-Link Wireless N Adapter,
that just happens to be in this computer.
But look over here. See the down arrow?
The arrow pointing down means that the device is disabled.
We can easily fix the problem. Right-click, Enable.
That refreshes. The arrow is gone.
Minimize that.
And you see it actually was self-repairing.
It was fixing the problem.
And now we have connections to multiple networks
and a straight connection out to the internet.
And if you were to look in your Notification area,
you'll see now your wireless connection
has gone from an exclamation point to actual bars,
and you'll know you have that connection now.
So here we have a screen of our wireless access point
and the configuration for it.
We have the wireless 2.4 gigahertz network
and a wireless 5 gigahertz.
So these run concurrently and separately,
and so then we could have clients connect to either one.
Newer clients,
I should say, computers with newer wireless adapters,
such as the newer 802.11n and, of course, the 802.11ac,
will be able to connect to this.
And older adapters, older types of 802.11n or b and g,
will connect to this.
So we're running both networks here.
We got the wireless 2.4 gigahertz.
It's enabled, it's running.
And the name of it is Unknown_Network.
I use names like that all the time.
At the end of the recording of this video,
I'll probably change it.
But, you know, names like that.
And then I'll usually disable the SSID, by the way,
after I get all my devices and printers
and everything connected.
But the mode, it's 11. That means 802.11.
And it's using b, g, and n, so it's a mixed mode.
Now, you won't get the best quality connections with this.
If you want the highest quality connections,
use just one network type.
That's usually not a possibility in small companies,
or in a small office, or at the home,
just because there's so many different devices coming in.
But if you can, you try to use just n.
And then the channel, channel 11's being used.
The range is 1 to 11. And generally, I like to use 11.
But there's three different portions to that.
There's 1 to 5, 6 to 10, and then 11.
If you're gonna have multiple wireless access points,
try to have one in each of those sections.
So we're using channel 11.
That's what the client needs to know.
It needs to know the name of the network
and the channel it's gonna connect on,
if it doesn't see that automatically.
Then the wireless 5 gigahertz we have,
also called Unknown_Network.
Separate name, slightly different. But Unknown_Network.
And then the mode, 802.11a, which is another type,
a older 5 gigahertz type, 54 megabits per second.
But also n, on the 5 gigahertz side, and ac.
Again, mixed.
When I redo all this after the videos are done,
I'm just gonna stick with ac
because all my devices can do ac.
So that'll be the fastest and best way to do it,
and the wireless access point
will work the most efficiently at that point.
And we look at the channel here. Different channel range.
This is, 165 is what I'm using.
And the usable range in United States...
And by the way, the range I gave for 2.4,
1 through 11, that was also for United States.
It might be different for different countries.
But the usable range in the United States
for 5 gigahertz wireless transmissions
is between, I believe, 48 and 165.
I think it's 48. So 165 is the last one.
And I tend to use the last one in the range
for my own stuff.
Generally, most people around you,
most companies around you, won't use that channel range.
So it kinda helps with keeping interference at bay.
So there's one of the channels for that.
And by the way,
there's other wireless frequencies out there.
You know, it's not just 2.4 and 5 gigahertz,
although those are the most common in the consumer market,
and even if you work for a company.
There's 3.6,
there's 4.9, which is used for public safety,
5.9, 60 gigahertz, the older 900 megahertz range,
which is actually being reused for other technologies.
So there's all different types of wireless connections.
But the ones you should know for the exam,
2.4 and 5 gigahertz.
And finally, let's take a quick look at the security,
because we actually showed a little of that
in our illustration of the computer
connecting to a wireless access point.
We said it used WPA2, which is recommended.
That's gonna be the connection type for your wireless.
WPA2 is the latest.
And PSK means pre-shared key, which means
that the key is stored on the wireless access point,
as opposed to on a server in an enterprise environment.
So we're using this.
And the encryption type, the cipher being used
to encrypt the data is AES, advanced encryption standard.
Highly recommended.
You know, you might see other options,
like TKIP or what have you, but AES is the way to go.
Anything else is most likely deprecated
and possibly crackable.
And then you have a password.
And you can have a huge password for this,
alphanumeric with characters all across the board.
And so you wanna select something complex for that
that will be hard to crack.
And up here, you'll see the infamous Disable Security.
Oh yeah.
Very rare that you will see this radio button selected.
Because, you know, if you disable the security,
well, then you have no encryption
and you can just have open connections.
That might be a possibility.
And maybe 10, 15 years ago,
somebody in a coffee shop might do that
so anybody could just connect.
But that is not smart as of today,
as of the recording of this video.
The only time you might see this
is if this is a SOHO router, an all-in-one device
that is only being used for wired connections,
and wireless is not being used at all.
If you have wireless shut off, well,
then there's no point in having wireless security.
It might just use up some of the processing power
of the device.
But otherwise, you've gotta have wireless security,
and a lot of it,
and WPA2 and AES is the recommendation for that.
So that's it for the wireless access point.
Just a little primer on that.
And that's the end of the sub-lesson.