Wireless Networking Explained

By: Lee Asher

Wireless networking is just what it sounds like -- a way of
creating networks without any wires! Wireless networks utilize
radio waves and/or microwaves to maintain commmunication
channels between computers and other network devices. If this
sounds exciting to you, then read on.

With a wireless network, you can create radio connections
between computers that let them communicate and connect to the
Internet without you having to go to all the trouble of
connecting them with wires. The computers don't even need to
have a clear path for the signal, as the wireless signal can go
through walls and between floors easily.

Where Did It Come From?

The story of wireless networking is a rather strange one. It is
basically an application of a technology called frequency
hopping which was, believe it or not, invented by the actress
Hedy Lamarr and a musician named George Antheil, back in the
1940s. Seriously, do a web search -- I promise I'm not pulling
your leg here.

They received a patent for their invention, which was intended
to help in the war effort. Hedy was Jewish, but had been made to
hide it and socialise with Hitler as a young woman -- she had to
drug her husband and run away to London to escape her native
Austria. The importance of what they'd done, however, wasn't
recognised until many years later.

The U.S. military adopted the technique in the '60s, using it
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Hedy never saw any money from
it as the patent had expired (don't worry, she was a film
star!), but she was given a Pioneer Award by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation in 1997, three years before her death.

Wireless at Home

When most people talk about wireless networks, they are talking
about wireless LANs (local area networks). A local area network
doesn't mean that it covers your whole neighbourhood -- the
'local area' in question can be only one building, such as your
house. So if you want wireless networking in your home, you want
a wireless LAN.

Once people have wireless in their home, they always seem to act
as if there's been an absolute miracle. After years of drilling
holes in the walls and running wires all over the place,
suddenly seeing them gone is really amazing.

The Myths

Wireless networking is expensive. Well, wireless networking used
to be expensive when it was new, but now the prices have come
way down thanks to competition and mass production. There are
hundreds of manufacturers of wireless equipment, with something
for every budget. Your costs will depend on how many computers
you want to connect and how far apart they are, but a typical
family should still be able to do it for less than $100 overall.
If you're willing to leave one of the computers on whenever
you're using the other one, you could do it for as little as
$20! Best of all, once you've spend the money, there's nothing
more to pay after that.

Wireless networking is hard. Again, this myth is a holdover from
the early days of wireless. It used to be very difficult, with
you needing to fiddle endlessly with the configuration on each
computer just to get the simplest things to work. Now, though,
Windows supports wireless out of the box, and setting it up is
easier than ever. You can usually plug in what you've bought,
put the CD in the computer and then sit back and watch it all
work perfectly!

Wireless networking is insecure. You might think it's dangerous
to have all your personal data floating around in the air for
anyone to read. Well, if you want, it's dead easy to enable
encryption for your wireless signals. It's already difficult for
outsiders to intercept wireless signals at all, and they
certainly won't be able to decode them as well.

Not Just at Home

It was home users that were quickest to adopt wireless
technology, willing to pay any amount to finally be free of
needing to run wires all over their house. Since then, though,
the technology has started to spread to offices, universities,
and all sorts of other places.

Chains of coffee shops and cafes have found that their customers
will stay for hours if they offer wireless Internet access, and
it's also becoming more common in hotels and airports. This
means that once you set up a laptop for wireless, it becomes far
more portable than it ever was before.

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Original Source: Articles-Galore.com



Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of CyberTech SoftShop

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