newbie trying to setup wireless

Hi,
Sorry for asking this but I'm really having troubling figuring out. My friend gave me a Linksys WAP11 Network Access Point and a Linksys 5-port switch. Now I'm trying to set up wireless service so that my Mac ibook G4 can use the wireless. I'm currently running Fedora Core 2 test3 and LAN service provice by the university. I googled for quite a while but couldn't find a good tutorial for it. My friend told me I can set things up without setting up my own LAN, which means I don't need to buy another network card. But I'm confused now about the relationship between my linux box and my laptop if there's no private LAN and with only one public IP. Can anyone tell me how to do it or refer some good tutorials that I can read through? Thanks

Okay, aftering messing around for a while, I finally set things up. It seems much easier than I thought. The whole thing looks like this:

Code:

---

                                                internet
                                                    |
                                                  switch
                                                /      \
                                      linux desktop    wireless access point
                                                                  ...
                                                                  ibook with airport

---

However, I'm still trying to understand how data get routed as there's two MAC addresses and only one IP address. Plus, I'm trying to find how to gain access control to my wireless. So I still need help.

Here I am again :) Aftering some googling, I learned tons and understand a little bit more about switches. After typing ifconfig on both my linux box and laptop, I realized that they actually have different IP addresses. That makes a lot more sense. If I'm not mistaken, I can have up to 5 different IP addresses with my 5-port switch. Now, one thing is still not answered, how can I gain control of my wireless using my linux box. So I still need help.

I'm back again. Now I understand one more thing. To control the Access Point, I need to hook it up with my Linux box using a USB cable. I guess I need to download some program from Linksys and use it to setup my Access Point. However, I doubt if that program will work on Linux. I'll be trying that. Please give me some hints. Thanks.