Question : Connecting Linksys or D-link Wireless Enet Router with ANY wireless PCMCIA card

THIS QUESTION IS BEING REPOSTED BECAUSE I ACCIDENTALLY POSTED IT IN A EE CATEGORY UNRELEATED TO NETWORKING AND NATURALLY I GOT NO REPLIES.

Please reply by answering the four numbered questions (1 - 4) below. This relates to a Cable modem connected to a router in the usual way.

I need to connect a new current model Linksys or D-Link Wireless-G/Wired router with a wireless LAN PCMCIA card in a 1-2 year old Windows XP laptop (as well as with a wired LAN card in a desktop PC running XP).  The wireless laptop is provided to students at a local college and connects to wireless Access Points at many locations around the college campus. I do not know anything else about the wireless PCMCIA card. The router will probably be the Linksys WRT54G or a comparable current D-link model.

In order to connect my router to the wireless PC in a home, three things must be the same at each end: Channel number, WEB encryption and SSID. (At least that's what they are called in D-Link terminology). If the college MIS department left the defaults in place for the wireless PC, then both the wireless PC card and the new out-of-the-box router will be set to channel 6 and WEB encryption disabled so those values will be the same on both ends. However the default router SSID will almost certainly be different than either the default or possibly reset (by the college) SSID on the wireless PC. An exception is if the PCMCIA card is from the same manufacturer as the router and the SSID is still at the default value BUT I CANNOT assume that will be the case as I know nothing about the wireless card.

So I have these four questions:
(1) Will the router detect the SSID of the wireless card and connect to it automatically without me MANUALLY changing the router SSID to the same value set on the wireless card? Someone told me this is so but I am dubious. Because I know for a fact that if one is setting up a new out-of-the box wireless card, the card setup does NOT automatically set the card SSID to the same value as the router. One MUST know the router SSID and manually enter it into the card setup or no connection will occur unless both ends just happen to have the same value. (At least with current model D-link products).

So for the router to automatically detect the card SSID and connect means that the router has AUTOMATIC connect capabilities that the wireless card does not have.

So my FIRST question is whether THIS IS IN FACT THE CASE for the two routers described in the first paragraph of this Question.

(2) And IF your answer is YES, then is this in fact how WiFi in Starbucks and Airports work. So that an Access Point can connect to any wireless card regardless of SSID setting.

(3) If your answer is NO, then I must manually reset the router SSID to the same value as is set on the wireless card.

My question here is as follows. I know that for routers (at least D-link) that information is password protected (as is the channel # and WEB encryption). Is it also password protected on the wireless card?

Because if it is and I don't know the password then I cannot set the router SSID to the same value as on the card and hence the wireless connection will not take place. Or can I find out the default password for the wireless card set by the manufacturer and enter that. The problem with that is that this default value is in the manual for the wireless card and the college supplied the students with NO MANUALS for the network cards so I cannot easily find out the password. OR AGAIN IS THERE NO PASSWORD PROTECTION FOR WIRELESS CARDS, JUST FOR WIRELESS ROUTERS so this is not an issue?

(4) Given what is above, how likely is it that the college MIS department left the card channel number at 6 and WEB encryption disabled as I am assuming? Because if not, then there are one or two more parameters I must match up for a wireless conection to take place.

Regards,
  Mike

Answer : Connecting Linksys or D-link Wireless Enet Router with ANY wireless PCMCIA card

- Windows 98 does not have built in support for wireless.  As such, you ALWAYS have to use the manufacturers drivers to configure the connection.
- Windows XP does have built in wireless support.  Sometimes the manufacturers still supply their own software for managing wireless network connections.  Even if they do, you can disable it.  Windows XP SP2 has excellent built in support for wireless.  If the card is a built in (centrino and the like) then most likely it will be configured through windows.

The way the wireless system in windows works (and the way most manufacturers wireless managment utilities work) is you create profiles for access point connections.  Those profiles will connect in order and have NOTHING to do with each other.  So basically he will have two profiles.  One for his school wireless and one for his home wireless.  You can set up his home wireless ANYWAY you see fit and it will never interfere with his school wireless profile.  Once those two profiles exist they will connect automatically to the selected access point (so long as they are configured to "connect automatically when in range").  Windows will simply go down the list and go "Do I see this access point. . . .good connect".  So that when he is at home it will see that his home network is in range and since a profile is set up he will connect.  When he is at school is will see that his school network is in range, and since a profile is set up it will connect.

The key here is NOT to use the same SSID on his home access point as they do at school.  Otherwise if you set any encryption options it will confuse the two points.

I would recommend at the very minimum setting up WEP or WPA encryption on that access point at home.  I would also try and enable hide SSID once you are connected to it successfully and you might want to implement MAC filtering.