Can 2 laptops be connected wirelessly without a router?

Question

2 laptops with wifi cards,can they be connected without ethernet cables and without routers to access each others files

Answer 1

You can create an AD-HOC wireless network. These are networks which simply connect computer to computer. The are not the standard connection which is called infrastructure and they do take a little configuration.
Here is the Microsoft HOW TO. Most of this depends on your Operating System This one is for XP but Vista is similar. Since this assumes you will also want internet - you can skip the part where you setup ICS (internet connection sharing!)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_02april08.mspx

That will connect your laptop to laptop or wireless card to wireless card.

Answer 2

you will have to temporarily connect to the router via Ethernet to properly configure the network. you can not implement WEP from a wireless connection. you should alway check to make sure you have connectivity to the Internet before implementing security settings, it makes troubleshooting easier... check to make sure you are getting an IP address from the DHCP server make sure to put the router in a location that is central to all wireless devices

Answer 3

Yes you can do it as a wireless network !