Setting up a connection
Here's how to setup a connection. Before you begin you'll need to be armed with the following information:

• Whether or not you use a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server on your network;

• The IP Address of a WINS or DNS server on your network;

• Your login name and password if you are going to access any Windows NT servers;

• And, most importantly, do you have a good connection to your network? (For example, if your card is a 10MB/sec Ethernet card, it won't work if you plug it into a 100MB/sec port).

Your first step will be to go to your Windows CE Control Panel and access the Network applet. Select Network Configuration and choose the correct driver, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A


Choose your network adapter and driver from the Network Control Panel. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Understanding IP addresses
If you have a DHCP Server on your LAN it means you won't have to come up with a valid fixed network address for your device; the DHCP server looks after all that. If you don't have a DHCP server, ask your network administrator to assign you a valid, fixed IP address.

If you're not sure what an IP address is, think of it this way. Each computer on the Internet has a specific, numerical address (kind of like each phone has a phone number). When you connect to the network, your computer needs to have that address assigned. Sometimes, like if you dial into an ISP, your IP address is assigned dynamically and remains assigned to your computer just long enough for that session on the net. Other times, in particular if you're part of a corporate network, an IP address is permanently assigned to your machine. This is called a fixed IP address. For the purposes of this article, you'll need a fixed IP address from your network administrator.

When you assign a fixed IP address, as shown in Figure B, you'll also need a few other pieces of information from your network administrator. You'll need the Subnet Mask (this tells your network how much of the IP address sequence is controlled by your router) and the Gateway address (this is the address of your router itself).

FIGURE B


Don't forget to get all the important IP configuration information before trying to set up your connection. Roll over picture for a larger image.

A quick tour of DNS and WINS
While IP addresses are critical to the infrastructure of the network, we as humans tend to use real names. For example, we think of Microsoft as microsoft.com and Windows CE Power as windowscepower.com. The translation between the text string "windowscepower.com" and the numerical IP address is done by two types of servers: a DNS (Domain Name Server) and a WINS (Windows Internet Name System) server.

A DNS is typically used to map Internet names to IP addresses across the Internet. A WINS server is typically used to map internal Windows NT server names and volumes to a physical IP address.

The WINS server is at work when you type in \\servername to connect to a shared device or NT server. Your machine needs to know how to find \\servername and the WINS server tells your machine the network address of it. DNS works in a very similar way. Again if you have DHCP this is taken care of. DHCP works by dynamically assigning the IP addresses throughout the internal network. It's pretty cool, but requires additional server-side configuration.