Setting up my home network with Windows Vista

In one of my previous posts I promised some words on setting up a home network with Vista. At home I have ADSL (12000/650) provided by Norways biggest broadband/telephone/cellular provider Telenor. We have a total of 4 computers in the household, all of them running on different versions of Vista; (1) The family desktop computer situated in my upstairs den – A Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo 600 running Windows Vista Ultimate, (2) My laptop – A HP Pavilion dv9074ea desktop replacement system that has taken over the role of my main computer also running Windows Vista Ultimate, (3) my sons desktop, a home built system with the AMD Athlon 2600 CPU  running Windows Vista Home Premium and finally an (4) aging Toshiba Satellite S121 laptop that barely runs Windows Vista Basic. On top of that we have a couple of rooms to let, presently occupied by a student running Windows XP Home.

Since the household computers are spread out over the three floors of the house, wiring were out of the question. Telenor provides the DSL modem, a Thompson SpeedTouch 564T2, and my wireless router is a D-link 624 54g.

Setting up a wireless network in Vista is simplicity itself. After getting connected to my provider having set up the modem and wireless router, setting the D-624 to filter by MAC adress as well as WPA encryption the routine is as follows;

1. Connect to your network by right-clikcing the network icon and then choosing that spesific option in the taskbar.

2. Choose your wireless network from the list

3. Enter the WPA encryption key

4. You are connected.

5. Repeat the above steps for the other computers as well

To see all your networked computers go into the Network and Sharing Center and choose to map your network (View Full Map);

It cannot be simpler than that! A huge improvement over the way I had to set everything up in Windows XP SP2 not even mentioning how it was done pre- SP2.