Friday, May 20, 2005

Making Your Home A Wi-Fi Hotspot

By Aditya Kuber

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) is the new buzzword and in the list of things that go to make a city the most wired one, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots is now playing a big part. Contradictory as that may sound, it’s true!

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. All you need is some more hardware and a few hours on a weekend and you can sit in your garden sending and receiving mails… that’s a pretty picture ain’t it?

Wi-Fi is the wireless way to handle networking. It is also known as 802.11 networking and wireless networking. The big advantage of Wi-Fi is its simplicity. You can connect computers anywhere in your home or office without the need for wires. The computers connect to the network using radio signals, and computers can be up to 100 feet or so apart.

Adding Wi-Fi to a Computer
One of the best things about Wi-Fi is how simple it is. Many new laptops already come with a Wi-Fi card built in—in many cases, you don't have to do anything to start using Wi-Fi. It is also easy to add a Wi-Fi card to an older laptop or a desktop PC. Here's what you do:
* Buy an 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g network card. 802.11g has the advantage of higher speeds and good interoperability on 802.11b equipment.
o For a laptop, this card will normally be a PCMCIA card that you slide into a PCMCIA slot on your laptop. Or you can buy a small external adapter and plug it into a USB port.
o For a desktop machine, you can buy a PCI card that you install inside the machine, or a small external adapter that you connect to the computer with a USB cable.
* Install the card
* Install the drivers for the card
* Find an 802.11 hotspot
* Access the hotspot.

A hotspot is a connection point for a Wi-Fi network. It is a small box that is hardwired into the Internet. The box contains an 802.11 radio that can simultaneously talk to up to 100 or so 802.11 cards. There are not many Wi-Fi hotspots available as yet in public places like restaurants, hotels, libraries and airports, but this should change soon.
* If you already have several computers hooked together on an Ethernet network and want to add a wireless hotspot to the mix, you can purchase a Wireless Access Point and plug it into the Ethernet network.
* If you are setting up a network in your home for the first time, or if you are upgrading, you can buy a Wireless Access Point Router. This is a single box that contains: 1) a port to connect to your cable modem or DSL modem, 2) a router, 3) an Ethernet hub, 4) a firewall and 5) a wireless access point.

You can connect the computers in your home to this box either with traditional Ethernet cables or with wireless cards. Either way, once you turn your Wireless Access Point on, you will have a Wi-Fi hotspot in your house.
In a typical home, your new hotspot will provide coverage for about 100 feet (30.5 meters) in all directions, although walls and floors do cut down on the range. Even so, you should get good coverage throughout a typical home. For a large home, you can buy inexpensive signal boosters to increase the range of the Hotspot.
If you are setting up your 802.11 (wireless) network from scratch, you will have to choose between 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. 802.11b is slightly less expensive, but it is the slowest of the three options. For home use, 802.11g costs just a little more, but is up to five times faster. If you will be doing a lot of file transfers between computers in your home, 802.11g is definitely the way to go.

Configuring Wi-Fi
On the newest machines, an 802.11 card will automatically connect with an 802.11 hotspot and a network connection will be established. As soon as you turn on your machine, it will connect and you will be able to browse the Web, send e-mail, etc. using Wi-Fi. On older machines, you often have to go through this simple three-step process to connect to a hotspot:
* Access the software for the 802.11 card—normally there is an icon for the card down in the system tray at the bottom right of the screen.
* Click the “Search” button in the software. The card will search for all of the available hotspots in the area and show you a list.
* Double-click on one of the hotspots to connect to it.

On ancient 802.11 equipment, there is no automatic search feature. You have to find what is known as the SSID of the hotspot (usually a short word of 10 characters or less) as well as the channel number (an integer between 1 and 11) and type these two pieces of information in manually. All the search feature is doing is grabbing these two pieces of information from the radio signals generated by the hotspot and displaying them for you.

Configuring a New Hotspot in your Home
Most wireless access points come with default values built-in. Once you plug them in, they start working with these default values in 90 per cent of the cases. However, you may want to change things. You normally get to set three things on your access point:
* The SSID: it will normally default to the manufacturer’s name (e.g. “Linksys”). You can set it to any word or phrase you like.
* The channel: normally it will default to channel 6. However, if a nearby neighbour is also using an access point and it is set to channel 6, there can be interference. Choose any other channel between 1 and 11. An easy way to see if your neighbours have access points is to use the search feature that comes with your wireless card.
* The WEP key: The default is to disable WEP. If you want to turn it on, you have to enter a WEP key and turn on 128-bit encryption.

Access points come with simple instructions for changing these three values. Normally you do it with a Web browser. Once it is configured properly, you can use your new hotspot to access the Internet from anywhere in your home.

Wi-Fi Security
Wi-Fi hotspots can be open or secure. If a hotspot is open, anyone with a Wi-Fi card can access the hotspot. If it is secure, the user needs to know a WEP key to connect.
WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, and it is an encryption system for the data that 802.11 sends through the air. WEP has two variations: 64-bit encryption (really 40-bit) and 128-bit encryption (really 104-bit). 40-bit encryption was the original standard but was found to be easily broken. 128-bit encryption is more secure and is what most people use if they enable WEP. For a casual user, any hotspot that is using WEP is inaccessible unless you know the WEP key.
If you are setting up a hotspot in your home, you may want to create and use a 128-bit WEP key to prevent the neighbours from casually eavesdropping on your network.
Whether at home or on the road, you need to know the WEP key, and then enter it into the Wi-Fi card’s software, to gain access to the network.

(c) The Herald

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