Putting Your Wireless Home Network to Work Part 2

Be Economical: Share Those Peripherals

Outside of the fact that there’s only so much space on your desk or your kitchen countertop, you simply don’t need a complete set of peripherals at each device on your network. For example, digital cameras are quite popular, and you can view pictures on your PC, on your TV, and even in wireless picture frames around the house. But you probably need only one color printer geared toward printing high-quality photos for someone to take home (after admiring your wireless picture frames!).

The same is true about many peripherals: business card scanners, backup drives (such as USB hard drives and NAS — network attached storage — boxes), and even cameras. If you have one device and it’s network enabled, anyone on the wireless network should be able to access that for the task at hand.

Setting up a print server

The most common shared peripheral is a printer. Setting up a printer for sharing is easy, and using it is even easier.

You may have several printers in your house, and different devices may have different printers — but they all can be shared. You may have the color laser printer on your machine, a less expensive one (with less expensive consumables such as printer cartridges, too) for the kid’s computer, and a high-quality photo printer maybe near the TV set plugged into a USB port of a networkable A/V device. Each of these can be used by a local device — if it’s properly set up.

Here are the steps you need to take to share a printer:

1. Enable printer sharing in the operating system of the computer to which the printer is attached.

2. Set up sharing for the installed printer. We say installed printer because we assume that you’ve already installed the printer locally on your computer or other device.

3. Remotely install the printer on every other computer on the network. We describe remote installation in the aptly named section "Remotely installing the printer on all network PCs," later in this topic.

4. Access the printer from any PC on the network!

Throughout the rest of this section, we go through these four general steps in much more detail.

Sharing your printer in Windows XP

Windows Vista and Windows XP are more sophisticated than previous Windows operating systems and subsequently have a server type of print sharing. In other words, they offer all the features of a big network with servers on your local machine. These features include the ability to assign users to manage the print queue remotely, embed printer software for easier installation, and manage when the printer is available based on a schedule you define.

To share a printer on Windows XP, follow these steps:

1. Choose StartOControl Panel, and then double-click Printers and Faxes.

Or simply choose StartOPrinters and Faxes, depending on how your Start menu is configured.

2. Right-click the printer in the Printers folder and choose Properties from the pop-up menu that appears.

3. On the Sharing tab of the dialog box that appears, click the Share this printer option. In the Share Name text box below this option, type a share name for your printer.

4. If you have computers using different operating systems (for example, a mixture of Windows XP, Vista, and even Windows 98 machines on your network), you’ll need to add additional printer drivers to support those machines. If this is the case, follow the additional steps below, otherwise click OK and you’re done.

5. Click the Additional Drivers button. Select which operating systems you want to support to use this shared printer, and also select the other types of drivers needed for your other computer systems and devices. Then click OK.

6. When prompted, insert a floppy disk or CD-ROM and direct the subsequent dialog boxes to the right places on those devices to get the driver for each operating system you chose.

Windows finds those drivers and downloads them to the Windows XP hard drive. Then, when you go to install the printer on your other computers (see the next section), the Windows XP machine, which is sharing the printer, automatically transfers the proper printer drivers and finishes the installation for you. It’s darned sweet, if you ask us!

Before you go out and start to put your newly shared printer on all your computers, you may want to create a shared folder on the computer you’re using to host your printer. In the folder, copy the driver software that came with the printer. If, in the process of installing the printer on other workstations, you need a driver that isn’t automatically available — such as an OS X driver for the printer — it’s ready and available on your network so that you don’t have to go looking for installation CDs to bring to the computer you’re trying to set up. Trust us, this one can save you a ton of frustration.

Remotely installing the printer on all network PCs

You perform the third step at every other PC in the house. Basically, you install the printer on each of these computers, but in a logical way — logically as opposed to physically installing and connecting the printer to each computer. You install the printer just like any other printer except that you’re installing a network printer, and the printer installation wizard searches the network for the printers you want to install.

The process you use will vary depending on the operating system you use and the type of printer you’re trying to install. In every case, read the printer documentation before you start because some printers require their software to be partially installed before you try to add the printer. We’ve seen this a lot with multifunction printers that support scanning, copying, and faxing.

With Windows, the easiest way to start the installation of a printer is to look inside My Network Places, find the computer sharing the printer, and doubleclick the shared printer. This action starts the Add Printer Wizard, which takes you through the process of adding the printer. This wizard works like any good wizard — you make a few selections and click Next a lot. If you didn’t add the drivers to the shared printer already, you may be asked for the printer drivers. Just use the Browse button to direct the wizard to look in the shared folder or CD-ROM drive where you put the printer software on the computer that the printer is attached to.

You have two options for installing a network printer:

From your Printers folder: Choose StartOSettingsOPrinters and Faxes (or simply StartOPrinters and Faxes, depending on how your Start menu is configured).

From My Network Places: Double-click the computer that has the printer attached. An icon appears, showing the shared printer. Right-click the icon and then choose Connect from the pop-up menu that appears.

Either route leads you to the Add Printer Wizard, which guides you through the process of adding the network printer.

Don’t start the Add Printer Wizard unless you have installed the proper drivers to the shared printer or you have the installation CDs for your printer handy. The Add Printer Wizard installs the printer drivers (software files that contain the info required for Windows to talk to your printers and exchange data for printing). The wizard gets these from the CD that comes with your printer. If you don’t have the CD, go to the Web site of your printer manufacturer and download the driver to your desktop and install from there. Don’t forget to delete the downloaded files from your desktop when you’ve finished installing them on the computer.

Note also that the wizard allows you to browse your network to find the printer you want to install. Simply click the plus sign next to the computer that has the printer attached, and you should see the printer below the computer. (If not, recheck that printer sharing is enabled on that computer.)

At the end of the wizard screens, you have the option to print a test page. We recommend that you do this. You don’t want to wait until your child has to have a color printout for her science experiment (naturally, she waits until 10 minutes before the bus arrives to tell you!) to find out that the printer doesn’t work.

Accessing your shared printers

After you have the printers installed, how do you access them? Whenever your Print window comes up (by pressing Ctrl+P in most applications), you see a field labeled Name for the name of the printer accompanied by a pulldown menu of printer options. Use your mouse to select any printer — local or networked — and the rest of the printing process remains the same as though you had a printer directly plugged into your PC.

You can even make a networked printer the default printer by right-clicking the printer and then choosing Set As Default Printer from the pop-up menu that appears.

Sharing other peripherals

Sharing any other peripheral is similar to sharing printers. You need to make sure that you’re sharing the device on the computer it’s attached to. Then you need to install that device on another PC by using that device’s installation procedures. Obviously, we can’t be specific about such an installation because of the widely varying processes that companies use to install devices. Most of the time — like with a printer — you need to install the drivers for the device you’re sharing on your other computers.

Note that some of the devices you attach to your network have integrated Web servers in them. This is getting more and more common.Thus, he can download music to and from the AudioReQuest server and sync it to other devices he wants music on.

Rather than look to the local hard drive for the CD, any of the kids’ PCs looks to the server to find the CD — hence, the name virtual CD. Now those stacks of CDs (and moans over a scratched CD!) are gone.

Windows Vista and a New Way to Share

If you are familiar with file sharing using Windows XP, you already know most of what you need to share with Windows Vista.

All the action in Windows Vista takes place in the Network and Sharing Center. The hardest part of using the Network and Sharing Center is finding out where the options are located to set up your networked PCs and devices. Often you will have to work your way through several layers of menus to find the options you want.

Setting up your Workgroup

We’ve mentioned that you want to have all your computers in the same workgroup — unless you have a server and domain, but we don’t expect a lot of you will because it’s not common in home networks. If you do, you don’t need to read the rest of this section.

The default workgroup name in Windows Vista is Workgroup. If you’re mixing Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista and you have never made any changes to the default workgroup name, you don’t need to change it now. However, if you’re mixing Windows XP Home and Vista, make sure that all of your computers are in the same workgroup if for no other reason than it makes finding things that are shared much simpler for everyone.

Just like in Windows XP, you need to have the proper security permissions in Windows Vista to be able to make any changes to your system. The security levels are the same in XP and Vista, but you access them differently in Vista. Just as in Windows XP, if you initially set up the machine, the first account you set up will have Administrator access.

You have two ways to check and change the Workgroup name in Vista. The first and simplest is to use the main Vista Welcome Center screen:

1. In the Welcome Center, choose the first option, View Computer Details, and then select Show More.

The Vista system information screen comes up.

2. To change the Name of your PC, click the Change Settings link.

The System Properties dialog box appears.

3. Click the Change button.

The Computer Name/Domain Change dialog box appears.

4. At this point you can you can change the computer name and the Workgroup name if required. When you’ve made your changes, click OK.

Make sure to use the same Workgroup name on each PC that you want to enable file sharing with.

Windows Vista displays a User Account Security Control window after most changes to the system. This prompt is asking you to confirm that you really want to change what you said you want to change, or access what you said you want to access. You are going to see this prompt a lot in Windows Vista.

The second way to check and change the Workgroup name in Vista is to open Windows Explorer:

1. Left-click the Windows Start orb.

Yes, it’s called an orb now (we don’t know why), and it replaces the Start Menu button.

2. To the right of the pop-up menu, you see a menu option labeled Computer. Right-click Computer and choose Properties.

Your local machine used to be called My Computer but is now called simply Computer. Ed figures the programmers at Microsoft just got tired of typing, given all the changes they already made to Vista.

3. At this point you are back at Step 2 and can follow the same steps to change the computer name and Workgroup name.

Setting up sharing in Vista

Now that you have your workgroup set up correctly, you should be able to see other shared computers and resources on the network. If you were using a Windows XP machine, you could just start setting up shares right now. Not so in Vista. Microsoft took all the security complaints about XP to heart when they created Vista, adding a second layer of firewall security (beyond the standard Windows Firewall) onto the network adapter itself. This prevents the machine from announcing itself on the network. (See the previous section, "Will You Be My Neighbor?") Before you can share anything, you need to configure your network adapter so it will announce itself to the network:

1. Left-click the Start orb, and from the menu in the right column choose Network.

2. In the Network browser, select Network and Sharing Center from the upper bar.

The upper bar is like the familiar toolbar in most Microsoft applications. The difference is that the upper bar appears only in the Vista Explorer window. It’s always located below the standard menu bar — the one that has menu options such a File and Edit — and it changes based on what you’ve selected in Vista Explorer. The Network and Sharing Center is where you’ll see all your network adapters.

3. If your wireless adapter is set up correctly, you’ll see it in the list of adapters. Click the Customize link on your wireless network connection.

4. If you have Windows Vista Home Premium or above, you must choose the network location type the first time you connect your PC to the network. (The network location type determines your Microsoft Vista firewall settings.)

• Public: If you’re connecting to a network in a public place, such as a coffee shop or an airport, choose a Public location type. Choosing Public will keep your computer from being visible to others on the network. Public offers the most security.

• Private: Use this option for a home, small office, or work network. Choosing Private automatically configures the firewall settings to allow for communication

If you want to enable communication between your PCs and other network devices, such as a printer, you need to choose the Private location.

If you decide to use the Private location type, you’re all set to start sharing resources from your Vista machine.

If you’re running a mix of XP and Vista on your home network, you could run into problems as soon as you turn on your Vista computer and let it announce itself to the network. When Vista starts broadcasting across your network, it can hide the rest of the computers on the network from each other. You won’t be able to see any computers in the Map view in Vista or My Network Places in XP — although you can still access the computers and devices. The reason for this is that Microsoft introduced a new protocol to Windows Vista that XP might not be set up to support. The Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol is a licensed data link layer protocol for network topology discovery and quality of service diagnostics, developed by Microsoft as part of their Windows Rally set of technologies. Windows Vista has this protocol installed by default, but Windows XP does not. If you are going to run both XP and Vista on your network and share between them, you need to install the LLTD responder for Windows XP. You can download this from the Microsoft site by searching (at search.microsoft.com) for KB922120. Or go to the following URL:

After you install this update on your XP machine, if you still have issues with sharing your XP and Vista machines, the reason could be that the LLTD protocol is disabled on the network adapter of the XP machine or is not supported by the network adapter itself (a likely culprit).

In Windows Vista, Microsoft installed the IPv6 protocol as a default on all network adapters. If you find that you are still having issues sharing, you will need to remove the IPv6 protocol. From the Network and Sharing Center, choose Manage Network Connections and then select the View Details link of the connection. Click the Properties button to display the Properties dialog box for the connection. Deselect the IPv6 protocol to turn it off. For most home networks, you will be using only IPv4; having IPv6 on the network is just futureproofing your investments. We don’t like to turn this off on our Vista machines, and we strongly recommend that you don’t unless this is the absolute last thing to try to get things working correctly.

At this point, unless you have an oddly configured XP firewall or a highly secured PC, your Vista machine should be connected to your home network. If you have more than one workgroup in your home, you can also turn on Network Sharing and Discovery — located in the Network and Sharing Center. This will allow your computer to see other network computers and devices, and makes your computer visible to those other workgroups.

Sharing in Microsoft Windows Vista

Keep in mind that sharing opens up your machine to anyone and anything on your network. We strongly recommend that you turn on password-protected sharing, which is a feature you access through your Network and Sharing Center. Although Microsoft added a lot of extra windows and menu layers to every process, we have to admit that Vista has gone a long way in simplifying many operations, and lets you get things done in a more intuitive way. You can click an option to turn on and off password-protected sharing. With the password-protected sharing feature on, only users with a login and password can access shared files and folders.

To give access to users on your network, you need to create user accounts for them on your Vista machine. The process is the same as the one for Windows XP.

To create a user account:

1. Click the Start orb, and select Control Panel.

2. Choose User Accounts.

3. If you have only one account, select the Manage Another Account link on the Manage Your Account screen.

The Add or Remove User Accounts screen appears.

4. Click the Add or Remove User Accounts option.

Your accounts management screen appears, where you can add a new user and set the account type.

5. Click the Create a New Account link to bring up the New Account window. When you create a new user account, you have two options for the account type:

• Standard User: This account can use most software and can change system settings that do not affect other users or the security of the computer.

• Administrator: This account has complete access to the computer and can make any changes. You don’t normally want to give Administrator access to an account you’re setting up for sharing. Any accounts with Administrator access can manage the computer system remotely and change anything they want to on your computer.

6. Follow the onscreen instructions to create the user.

After you create the new account, you are brought back to the New Account window.

7. To set up a password for the new account, right-click the account icon and select Create Password. Enter the desired password and then select Accept Changes.

You need to do this for each new account you create.

You’re now ready to share your folders, printers, and any other devices you have attached to your Vista machine.

Thankfully, sharing a folder or device in Vista is the same as in Windows XP. From Explorer, right-click the file, folder, or device and choose Properties. On the Sharing tab, choose Sharing and then choose Share. This displays a new window where you have the option to Stop Sharing or Change Sharing Permission. If you are using password-protected sharing — which you should be using — you need to select the users for whom you want to allow access. When you select Sharing Permission, you have the option to add a user. From the Add User drop-down list, you can choose a single user name or you can select Everyone in this list if you want all user accounts to have access to the folder or file. After you have added a user to the list for this share, you can also change his or her permission level to reader, co-owner, or contributor.

If you don’t want to deal with setting up share properties on multiple folders, you can copy or move files to your Public folder and share from that location. This allows you to turn on sharing in the directory of folders named Public, and you simply put all files you want shared into those directories. In this case, anyone with a user account and password on your computer will be able to access those files. Also, anyone on your network will be able to see and read those files but not change them.

Sharing between Macs and Windows-based PCs

If you have an OS X Macintosh computer (using OS X versions 10.2 right on through to the current 10.5), you don’t need to do anything special to get your Mac connected to a PC network for file sharing. All these versions of OS X support Windows networking protocols rights out of the box, with no add-ons or extra software required.

Getting on a Windows network

To connect to your Windows PCs or file servers, simply go the OS X Finder and then choose GoOConnect to Server (Command+K). In the dialog box that appears, you can type the IP address or host name of the server you’re connecting to and then click the Connect button. Alternatively, click the Browse button in the dialog box to search your local network for available servers and shares.

Letting Windows users on your network

To let Windows users access your Mac, you simply turn on file sharing in your Mac’s System Preferences. To do so in OS X versions 10.4 and earlier, follow these steps:

1. Open System Preferences (click the System Preferences icon on your Mac’s dock).

2. Click the Sharing tab to view your file-sharing options. Make sure that the Services tab is open.

3. Select Windows Sharing in the services listing, and then click the Start button to activate it.

4. Close the Sharing dialog box.

If you’re using the latest version of OS X (10.5 Leopard), just do the following:

1. Open System Preferences and click the Sharing tab (as described above).

2. Select the File Sharing check box.

3. Click the Options button.

4. In the dialog box that appears, select the Share Files and Folders Using SMB check box.

5. Click the Done button.

Bonjour, Madam!

One cool feature that Apple has added to its latest versions of Mac OS — Mac OS versions 10.2 and beyond — is a networking system named Bonjour. Bonjour, previously known as Rendezvous, is based on an open Internet standard (IETF, or Internet Engineering Task Force, Zeroconf) and is being adopted by a number of manufacturers outside of Apple.

Basically, Bonjour (and Zeroconf) is a lot like Bluetooth in that it allows devices on a network to discover each other without any user intervention or special configuration. Bonjour is slowly being incorporated into many products, such as printers, storage devices (basically, networkable hard drives), and even household electronics such as TiVo.

Here’s one great feature about Bonjour: On Macs equipped with Apple AirPort network adapter cards, it lets two (or more) Macs in range of each other — in other words, within Wi-Fi range — automatically connect to each other for file sharing, instant messaging, and other tasks without going through any extra steps of setting up a peer-to-peer network.

Bonjour is enabled automatically in Mac OS version 10.2/3/4/5 computers if you enable Personal File Sharing (found in System Preferences; look for the Sharing icon) or use Apple’s iChat Instant Messaging program, Apple’s Safari Web browsers, or any Bonjour-capable printer connected to your AirPort network.

That’s it! Your Mac automatically turns on Windows sharing and opens the appropriate holes (ports) in your firewall. If you haven’t already enabled accounts on your Mac for sharing, you’re prompted by OS X to do so now. Simply click the Enable Accounts button, and in the dialog box that opens, select the accounts (or users) of your Mac that you want to allow access to. To do this, just select the check box next to each name you want to enable, and then click Done. That’s all there is to it. If you want to connect to your LAN from a Windows computer, simply browse your Neighborhood Network in Windows XP or Vista or enter your network’s address on an Explorer address bar. It’s something like the following:

(Substitute your Mac OS X username for username, of course!)