User's Manual

13
Chapter 3
Wireless Topologies
Harmony wireless products look and operate similar to Ethernet products. The only
difference is that a radio replaces the wire between various nodes. This means that all
of your existing applications that operate over Ethernet will work with Harmony
without any special wireless networking software. The Harmony 802.11a PCI Card
supports several network topologies, which are described in this chapter.
Ad Hoc
With wireless LANs, one or more computers easily establish an ad hoc network when
the units are in range of each other. Each computer can dynamically connect and
reconnect to the others with no additional configuration, using off-the-shelf peer-to-
peer network operating systems, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Ad Hoc
To use the Harmony 802.11a PCI Card as a member of an Ad Hoc network with other
802.11a-compatible cards, configure the card to operate in Ad Hoc mode. See Chapter
4 for information on how to configure the 802.11a parameters.