Going Wireless with Your Mobile Device

In "802.11b Boot Camp," April 2003, http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 38267, I provided an overview of 802.11b wireless Ethernet technology. This month, I build on that discussion by describing what you can achieve when you combine an 802.11b network card with a mobile device such as a Pocket PC. I've spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with this combination and have made some surprising—and potentially useful—discoveries.

Configuring Cards and Devices
So far, I've used two Windows CE—compatible 802.11b cards: Agere Systems' Proxim ORiNOCO Gold PC Card (which Proxim markets) in the larger CardBus size and Symbol Technologies' Symbol Wireless Networker CompactFlash (CF) card. I've used both cards with Compaq's iPAQ 3670 Pocket PC and an appropriate expansion pack, and NEC's MobilePro 780 handheld PC professional (H/PC pro) mini-notebook form-factor device. I performed most operations on my home wireless LAN, which is built around a NETGEAR MR314 four-port wireless router plugged into a DSL line, but I also used a variety of public 802.11b hotspots.

Both Agere and Symbol Technologies supply Windows CE drivers with their cards, although with the ORiNOCO card I had to bypass the default installation program and manually launch setup.exe from the appropriate directory (i.e., \drivers\wince\wince212) on the installation CD-ROM. Both cards use standard Windows CE—compatible setup programs to initially install the driver files on the user's PC. Microsoft ActiveSync then copies these files from the PC to the mobile device during the next synchronization operation.

After I installed the necessary drivers for both cards, I inserted the ORiNOCO card into my mobile device. The iPAQ (with the required PC Card/CardBus expansion pack) and the ORiNOCO card are bulky. However, this combination benefits from an additional battery in the PC Card expansion pack. Upon inserting the card, the mobile device displayed a network settings dialog box, which Figure 1 shows. At this point, I had to determine some settings, such as whether the card would use DHCP or a static IP address (and associated name server addresses).

The drivers for both wireless cards provide a graphical display of signal strength in the icon bar. Double-tapping the signal-strength icon prompted a dialog box that let me associate the device with a particular wireless Access Point (AP) and adjust appropriate settings (e.g., Wired Equivalent Privacy—WEP—standard encryption level and keys, if used). The ORiNOCO card uses configuration profiles to store these settings. I found this approach convenient for situations when I needed to use the device to access public hotspots, which usually require no encryption. I can create a public profile to access these hotspots, and when I return to my home network, I just switch back to a home profile that retains my encryption settings.

Wireless Networking
After you configure your wireless card, as I've just described for my hardware, you should have access to the Internet (assuming your AP connects to the Internet). To determine whether your Web connection is working, simply open Pocket Internet Explorer (IE) and attempt to connect to any Web site. If your AP doesn't connect to the Internet, you should still have access to intranet sites on the local network.

Enabling other network applications can be more complex. Microsoft doesn't include basic network tools such as Ping, Tracert, or Ipconfig with any current version of Windows CE. Such tools are frequently necessary to get network applications running—even Microsoft's own ActiveSync. Fortunately, several solutions are available. For handheld PCs (H/PCs), Microsoft PowerToys 3.0 for H/PCs provide network utilities, including Handheld PCs IP Address, Host Name Look Up, and Ping. You can download these PowerToys at http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/handheldpc/downloads/powertoys/powtoy30.asp. For Pocket PCs, several third-party options are available, including Cambridge Computer's vxUtil for Windows CE, which includes DNS Audit and Lookup, Finger, Info, a port scanner, Trace Route, Whois, and more. You can download vxUtil for free at http://www.cam.com/vxutil.html. Another suite of tools to consider is Incentive Solutions' IPer. IPer provides several utilities, including adapter information, protocol statistics, Ping, a traffic generator, an SNMP MIB browser, and a TCP port scanner. When you use IPer with an adapter that supports promiscuous mode, the program can also record performance traffic analysis on all packets. IPer is shareware and available for download at http://www.isimus.com/IPer.

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