A wireless connection is required to network the notebooks. This is because, notebooks are mobile computing devices, there, designing and implementing an efficient wireless network within the house will help the notebooks to connect and also share the printer resources. A Wi-Fi or a wireless network is similar to a common wired network. Setting up a wired network will make the house look untidy though. A wireless network provides roaming advantages in that the four occupants of the house can access the internet from any location in the house. Notebooks can connect to the wireless network if they have wireless adapters cards installed and if they are working correctly (Odom, 2013). Notebooks then connect by using radio signals instead of using cables hence an individual can be able to move from one place to another within the house while using the same network.

Assuming that the wired network, the ISP connection is working and the notebooks are running windows 7 operating system, a wireless network needs to be set up within the house so that all the notebooks will be able to use the single fast internet connection.

One of the necessary network device required is the Wireless router. A wireless router acts as a gateway between the local area network (LAN) and the internet. It is commonly used in home networks to enable users connect to the internet. The device broadcast high-speed internet access throughout the hose. The preferred wireless router is a Cisco Linksys Small Office and Home Office (SOHO) router which costs approximately US$80.

The next step is to check and confirm that the notebooks have a wireless network card or adapter installed. The function of the wireless card is to enable the notebooks to establish connection to wireless router. Most modern notebooks have inbuilt wireless cards in form of PCMCIA. If not available, the wireless card comes in form of a USB at a cost of US$ 40.
To check and confirm if the notebooks have wireless network installed, the notebook should list all the available wireless adapters. In most cases, there are symbols which indicate there are wireless adapters installed.

Since there is fast internet connection in the house from an internet service provider, the cable or the DSL modem is checked to confirm that it is correctly installed. The wireless network adapters since they are needed should be working in each notebook. The next step is to connect the cable or the DSL modem to the WAN port of the Cisco Linksys wireless router. Since there are several rooms in the house, the router should be placed at the middle of the house so that each room will have a maximum possible signal strength. The wireless router can be then turned on and wait for the diagnostic lights to be stable an indication that the connection is working (Odom, 2013). The connectivity to the router is tested by ping the host IP address of the router from all the notebooks. For example, ping 192.168.1.1. The ping should be successful indicating that the connections has been established.

The wireless network needs to be secure by providing it with a unique wireless key. The notebooks can share the single high-speed internet connection. This is because the router assigns the notebooks private IP addresses which are not routed to the internet. A singly public IP address for the connection is enough because many private IP addresses are mapped to the single public IP address for internet connection. The roommates can also share the printer if they need it (Microsoft, 2014). However, there are factors to take into consideration such as the printer should support Wi-Fi connection and it should be assigned a static private IP address. The roommates can then be able to print through the wireless router.