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QUESTION POSED ON: 27 May 2003
I have successfully set up two laptops on an "ad-hoc" wireless network. I have tried unsuccessfully to introduce a third laptop by following the same steps used on the above two.

So far I have managed to get the wireless card working, but I cannot see either way on the network neighborhood (I.E. laptop 1 and 2 can see each other, but 1 and 2 cannot see 3, or indeed 3 cannot see 1 or 2.) Can you offer any suggestions, as I have tried everything? All three laptops are 98SE.

EXPERT RESPONSE
You have stumbled upon a fundamental difference between peer-to-peer ad hoc wireless connections and infrastructure wireless networks. Ad hoc connections let a pair of stations to communicate directly with each other. Infrastructure networks allow many stations to communicate with each other and adjacent network(s) through a wireless access point. If you want your three laptops to communicate with each other concurrently, you'll need to create an infrastructure network by adding an access point. Alternatively, you could create separate ad hoc connections between these laptops by assigning different SSIDs to each pairing and switching between them as needed - but note that each radio can support only one association at a time. Ad hoc connections will do if you only need two computers communicating at once, but more than two computers requires an infrastructure network.

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