Other Cool Things You Can Network

The wireless age is upon us, with all sorts of new devices and capabilities
that you can add onto your network that save you time, enhance your
lifestyle, and are simply fun. After you have your wireless local area network
(LAN) in place (which we show you how to do in Parts II and III), you can do a
nearly unlimited number of things. Sort of reminds us of the Dr. Seuss book,
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!.
In this chapter, we introduce you to some of the neater things that are available
today for your wireless home network. And in Chapter 19, we talk about
those things that are coming soon to a network near you! Together, with the
gaming and A/V discussion in Chapters 12 and 13, you’ll see why we say that
wireless home networking isn’t just for computers anymore.
In this chapter, we give you an overview of a lot of new products, but we can’t
really give you a lot of specific information about how to set up these products.
In general, you have to provide your Service Set Identifier (SSID) and
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) codes, and that should be 95 percent of what
you need to do to set up your device for your wireless network. In this chapter
and in Chapter 19, we feel that it’s important to expose you to the developments
that are happening now so that you can look around and explore different
options while you wirelessly enable your home. To say that your whole
house is going to have wireless devices in every room within the next three
years is not an understatement — it’s truly coming on fast (so hold on tight!).
The wireless-enablement of consumer goods is spreading faster than a wildfire.
As we write, products are coming out daily. A lot of the products that we
mention in this chapter represent some of the early forms of addressing the
wireless enablement of some area of your home. If you’re interested in seeing
what else has popped up since we wrote the book, try searching Yahoo!
(www.yahoo.com), as well as our book update site at www.dummies.com/
extras, for the products that we mention in the book. The press likes to
compare different items in articles, and you’re likely to find other new products
along with those referenced in this book.