How Does Wireless Networking Work?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews. Today I'm going to explain to you how wireless networking works. Now, wireless networking is actually just basically an extrapolation of wired networking into the radio range. Your computer has a device in it that basically serves as a bi-directional antenna that will communicate with a fixed point somewhere that we call a wireless access point. You might have wireless access points at, you know, coffee shops. Especially you might have one in your home that you've hooked up to your internet connection. So, basically this wireless antenna built into your computer will notice that a signal is coming from the wireless access point over radio waves and they will communicate with each other both ways. This kind of means that it's a, sort of a short range type of thing because you have to have that bi-directional communication. You know, with regular radio waves you have a very powerful radio antenna, like on a big tower and your radios can receive it in a long range because it's only one way. But, since they have to communicate both ways, wireless networking is typically a short range type of thing. I'm going to show you a little bit on the computer about how you would access a wireless network. Under desktop, if you have a wireless network built into your computer, you can see here that I hold my mouse over it and it says it's not connected and that wireless networks are available. It's these two little computers down here in the tray that make up a network icon. So, I'll right click on that and I'll just say connect to a network. Now, this just told the antenna inside of my computer to do a search and see what wireless networks it has within range. And it comes back with a list of what's available. I'm just going to select the one that I have here. Double click on it and then it will warn me that it's unsecure, which basically means it's transmitting data over the radio unencrypted. So, I'm going to connect anyway. And my laptop's radio is now communicating back and worth with the access point that I have here and basically connecting me to the internet. My name is Dave Andrews and I've just told you a little bit about how a wireless networking works."