At our luxury villas, we provide our guests with broadband access via wireless access points. There is no encryption, all we do is tell the guests the SSID and theoretically they should only have to put that in to connect. In the case of XP, it lists the available access points so, again theoretically, it's a no-brainer to connect.
That is the idea.
My experience has been different to that. Most guest cannot configure their laptops, many have network switching applications that prevent simple reconfiguration, many just are totally clueless and require a visit from a technician to get it working.
That also seem to be the case.
Wireless access was supposed to be as simple as turning on a light or filling your car with gas. Why do so many people have trouble accessing it?
Windows XP.
On older Win32 operating systems the 802.11 hardware came with its own utility to configure the card. This was a straight-forward process and was usually automatic out-of-the-box, i.e. it was configured to automatically connect to the first AP it heard, disable WEP, do DHCP, and just work. Apple is also configured to work that way.
OTOH, XP refuses to connect to an "insecure" WLAN without being manually reconfigured. Also, more often than not the 802.11 interface seems to end up as part of the LAN bridge (why in the name of Cthulhu they put that into XP is beyond me) which never seems to work as desired and must be ripped out again. This is not a one-step process.
One this I want to do is provide a document to assist them. If anyone has a instruction sheet already prepared on configuring a windows laptop to connect, with troubleshooting steps, I would love a copy with permission to use.
BTW, if you come up with a good set of instructions for making an 802.11 card just work for XP, please share. The above problem reared its ugly head last night and I just couldn't manage to walk the woman through solving the problem over the phone. <sigh>
Also, if anyone can suggest a simple application that makes this task easier I can provide on disk.
Uh, Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, or Windows 2000? Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Any other suggestions and comments appreciated.
Chris Mason [EMAIL PROTECTED] Box 340, The Valley, Anguilla, British West Indies Yahoo IM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 264 497-5670 Fax: 264 497-8463 www.netconcepts.ai
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Brian Lloyd 6501 Red Hook Plaza, Suite 201 [EMAIL PROTECTED] St. Thomas, VI 00802 +1.340.998.9447 - voice +1.360.838.9669 - fax GMT-4
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