Wireless Windows XP

Introduction
Microsoft promises Windows XP delivers a seamless wireless networking experience, with easy setup and reliable performance. That's just what we were looking for, after months of suffering with Intel's notoriously unreliable AnyPoint Wireless network access and Internet connection sharing software for Windows 98, which, on our test system, crashes frequently and loses connections at least once a day. In this report, we'll detail our experience with wireless networks and Windows XP.

Test 1: Intel AnyPoint
It's not much of an exaggeration to say that our experiences with the Intel AnyPoint software have amounted to one long struggle, practically since day one. We spent dozens of hours trying to get the thing working in the first place before finally giving up and calling Intel, where a technician finally helped us configure the software and successfully make a wireless Internet connection "stick" after a reboot. In short, we had to disregard the information in the manual and use static IP addresses on all our connected devices. Even after this undocumented procedure, we could never see our whole workgroup -- only the two machines with the wireless connection could be seen on that LAN segment. The "Server" PC, which also includes a wired Ethernet connection for connection to the Internet, could see the rest of the network, but its wireless client could not. This was less than ideal, but not too serious a limitation. We also experimented with a beta version of a Network Bridge Utility from Intel that purported to fix this problem, we we never managed to get it to work. (Intel subsequently pulled the software from its website -- perhaps no one else got it to work, either.)

Anyway, the real problem was the flakiness of the software running under Windows Me. Now, I don't know whether Microsoft or Intel are to blame, but the vast majority of the time, it was the Intel software that failed, not Windows Me, so I would tend to suspect  the AnyPoint software was the primary culprit. We considered setting up a PC with Windows 2000 to run the recently released Win2K version of the AnyPoint software suite, but when we received Windows XP, we thought: let's give it a go.

The good news is: it was almost exactly as easy as Microsoft promised. We booted Windows XP (RC2) and plugged the AnyPoint USB adapter in. The system detected the device as a HomeRF wireless adapter and installed the necessary drivers. It then automatically  ran the Network Wizard and configured a LAN bridge. It immediately worked! And, glory of glories, we could see ALL of our networked computers. The LAN bridge was connecting the previous disparate network segments.

Better still, we did not need to reconfigure the client PC (which was still running Windows Me with the Intel AnyPoint client software installed) at all. We merely turned off the "Internet Programs Connect Through ISS" option in the taskbar and our client PC was immediately able to surf the wireless Web!

Best of all, performance seemed to be markedly better using the Internet Connection Sharing feature of Windows XP, than it had been using the AnyPoint "server" running on Windows Me. We were able to view streaming videos -- something that had never worked properly under the AnyPoint server, for reasons we never quite understood -- and the connection proved completely robust -- a far cry from our previous results.

Unfortunately, our euphoria was short-lived. We were disappointed -- no, 'horrified' is probably a more accurate word -- to discover that we no longer use FTP software to access the PCBuyersGuide website, or indeed, any other FTP service hosted locally on our intranet PCs. We fiddled around, assuming it must be a firewall related issue or some other security setting, but we didn't manage to sort it out until our second round of tests with 802.11b (detailed below). The issue turned out to be easily solvable, but this temporary setback led us to restore the AnyPoint server machine to Windows Me again.

Update: We eventually solved this problem by upgrading the client to Windows XP, as well. After a brief but horrific episode in which we discovered that the Internet Connection Sharing software for Windows 2000 causes serious problems in Windows XP, we uninstalled the AnyPoint ISS Internet sharing software and used the "Network Bridge" function of Windows XP to bridge the wireless and wired networks, then set the Bridge to obtain its IP address and DNS information from a DHCP server (we used SyGate; a hardware Internet sharing box would also work.)  Then, we set the AnyPoint client to a static IP address, referring to our DHCP's "gateway" address of 192.168.0.1, and all was well. Needless to say, this took quite a while to figure out, but it worked well once all the head-scratching was over.

In early Sept., Intel announced "AnyPoint II," based on the 802.11b wireless networking protocol.

The company released a fully Windows XP version of the AnyPoint software (v2.30.01) for download on November 15 at www.intel.com/anypoint. As with previous releases, all clients and the server on a wireless network must be using the same AnyPoint software version.

Test 2: 802.11b
We also tested a pair of Lucent Orinoco 802.11b "Wi-Fi" cards, and a WaveBase ISB Internet Sharing Box from Nexland Canada. (www.nexlandcanada.com). The ISB includes a wireless card slot on the back, allowing a PCMCIA wireless card to be inserted and the unit to act as a firewall, router and access point for both wired and wireless network clients. It's a very easy unit to set up: you simply connect it to an Ethernet-based Internet connection (we tested the ISB using an ADSL connection) and then access the unit's internal services using a web browser, pointing to the address 192.168.0.1. The ISB provides a DHCP server and various firewall capabilities and requires no software to be installed on connected client machines. Its firmware is easily upgradeable, too -- a plus when it comes to dealing with new security threats. It's a good thing the firmware is upgradeable, too: the initial firmware in the unit we received had an annoying tendency to forget it was connected to a network once or twice a day.

Nexland says the unit runs a proprietary operating system and as such is not subject to the exploits affects Windows or Linux-based DHCP server/router boxes. The company also confirms that the ISB is not negatively affected by the "default.ida" requests that are at the heart of problems caused by the Code Red worm, as are some routers from Cisco and other vendors.

Windows Me was running on one of the machines on which we tested an Orinono card. Puzzlingly, this machine seemed to configure the Orinoco card and Client Manager driver correctly, but never seemed to actually connect to anything. Although the Device Manager said "this device is working correctly," the Client Manager always reported "No Device Present." We spent an hour on the phone with a Nexland technician, but he, too, was able to explain or resolve this problem. The machine was a Compaq Presario 1920, although we suspect the problem had nothing to do with the brand of PC, but rather the seemingly inevitable entropy effect that causes Windows 9x machines to act strangely sooner or later.

So, we upgraded this trouble-plagued machine to Windows XP. Could Windows XP succeed in fixing this problem?

In a word, yes. Windows XP was as adept at handling 802.11b networking as it had been with Intel's AnyPoint. We simply plugged in the Orinoco PCMCIA card. Windows XP detected the card, loaded the drivers and then asked if we wanted it to automatically configure the network. We said yes. It did. It was as simple as that.

Interestingly, we later used the Uninstall Windows XP option in the control panel to return to Windows Me and reinstalled the "Fall 2001 driver and client" OriNOCO software package. This time, it worked exactly as expected. Go figure. More evidence of the instability of Windows Me, it seems.

The only special configuration required for full access to our network was enabling the "passive transfers" option in our FTP client (WS_FTP). This is exactly the same procedure as is required to access our FTP server from behind other firewalls, such as the one built into Windows XP. (And, as you may have guessed, this option also turned out to be the missing ingredient required to make an FTP connection via the AnyPoint network.)

Conclusion
XP delivered exactly what it promised in solving our wireless connection problems, and, for those not running an FTP server, the system's simple, automatic configuration leaves almost nothing to complain about. The AnyPoint software running on XP or Windows 2000 cleanly addresses our biggest problem with the AnyPoint software. It -- like almost any server-oriented software -- is far too flaky on Windows 9x or Me.

For Further Reading:

• For more information, see part 2 of our wireless networking feature.
• Working without wires: Two broadband routers reviewed - CNET.com
• Cross-platform wireless networking - www.macwindows.com
• 'AirSnort' pokes holes in AirPort network security - MacCentral
• ORiNOCO Gold help page - PracticallyNetworked.com
• The REAL reason I wound up in home-networking hell - ZDNet AnchorDesk