The Book of Wireless: A Painless Guide to Wi-Fi and Broadband Wireless

This book is great! It covers everything that has anything to do with Wi-Fi, 802.1b, etc. This book presents, in plain, understandable English, everything you need and or wanted to know.The book covers everything from IP addresses to antennas, to frequency theory. A perfect guide for anyone working with networking, or anybody who is just curious about the topic. Do yourself a favor... buy this book and then give one as a gift to a friend. It's well worth it!

What I liked a lot about this book besides the wealth of information presented in a concise form was also its (at times) informal approach to the topic. The author places himself in the shoes of the average person struggling to set up their own wireless network in either a business or home situation.The book's first chapter describes how "wi-fi" works, and the next chapter explains the "materials" you need to set up a wireless network. The next couple of chapters describe how to install network access points and interfaces. Since I have some knowledge of LAN's, I was able to see the "comparisons" between conventional networks and wireless. I'm assuming that was what the author had in mind while writing the book.He also talks about extending your wireless network, guerilla (ie "illegal") networking. and security for wireless networks. I was glad to see that chapter, as I had heard it could be relatively easy to "interrupt" network traffic, as well as breaking into a wireless network illegally. While the author points out no wi-fi network will ever be 100% safe, better to be safe than sorry. And last but not least, the book's final chapter is on troubleshooting your network.I found this book to be a great introduction to wireless networks.

I found that this book had VERY comprehensive sections on setting up wireless connections for all the major operating systems, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Unix, as well as setting up Wi-Fi for your PDA and other handheld devices. Overall this is an outstanding book which gives you a good working knowledge of every aspect of wireless networking and how to set up a small home network or a larger corporate Wi-Fi network with a firewall and VPN...