Gigatech

Simple Facts of WIFI

A wireless network is any network that uses radio waves as its carrier or physical layer. Such things include cell phones, wireless routers, wireless access points, or any such device that only uses a radio wave. The most basic equipment you can use to do a wireless network in your house would be to first buy a high speed internet connection such as DSL (Direct Subscriber Line) or Cable internet access. After that you could go to your local Wal-Mart or any computer electronic store and buy what is called a router. A router is a device that takes multiple computers and routes through it each bit of information to each computer that it sends information to or as in sending information out to the internet. After you buy a router u would then need to buy a wireless access card for each Desktop PC or laptop you have. Most new laptops already have this built in but it’s better to have a card outside the laptop to be able to upgrade the wireless speed as needed. Speaking of speed in routers, the three most important specs you will see today is B, G, and N. Each standard has its on speed and range that the router will cover. Most wireless B routers work at a speed of 11 mbit/s and have a range of 30 meters indoors. Wireless G routers are the most used and widely seen today which runs at 54 mbit/s and has a range of up to 30 meters indoors. The main reason for this spec becoming more popular then wireless spec B is that it allowed for larger files such as the streaming of music, documents, and small movies to be moved over a network a bit quicker then a wireless B network, It also allowed for small LAN parties to do network games. Another, side of the wireless G spec is Atheros' proprietary frame-bursting, compression and channel bonding technology to improve the wireless G spec to do up to 108 mbit/s which is achieved through the bonding of two 54Mbit/s 802.11g channels and a range of 30 meters indoors. Now the final and last wireless spec to talk about is a bit tricky to talk about because it has yet to be ratified by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and will hopefully be ratified by June of 2007. The N spec runs at 540 mbit/s and has a range of 50 m indoors. This spec will have the ability to transfer files faster then the wireless G spec and will also allow large LAN parties and networks with the ability to stream music, movies, and HD programming. The wireless N spec also uses a technology called MIMO (multiple input multiple output) which uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennas normally 3 to allow for increased data throughput. All of these specs will work with each other however, if you put a B spec in a G or N network the G and N network will step down its speed to the lowest card on the network. Ok now that we know what a wireless network, equipment, and specs are I will now talk about securing these devices. Most wireless routers out of the box come pre-configured with what is called an SSID (service set identifier) which is normally the name of the company that built the router. It is normally a good idea to change this name to something that you prefer and also stop the router from broadcasting the SSID. At this point changing the router name is also a good way of protecting yourself. This will prevent anyone around your network from seeing your networks name when there wireless card scans the area for available networks. The second thing to do would be to make sure your router firmware is up to date. This can be done by going to the website of the company that makes the router, locating the web page the router is on and look to see if there are any firmware updates. Most new routers today will automatically update there firmware. The Third thing to do to secure your wireless network would be to change the administrative password in the router, most routers default password is admin so it’s a very good idea to change this. The forth step is to turn on the wireless MAC address filter which do this after you have hooked up all the wireless units you are going to install on this router at this time. This will then scan your wireless network and find the addresses of all your pc’s and then put them in a list that allows them access to the network and will prevent any other pc that you have not authorized to join the network. The fifth step is to turn on either WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption which is an encryption mechanism that uses the stream cipher RC4 for confidentiality and the CRC-32 checksum for integrity. You can either create a 64 bit or a 128 bit key for WEP. However, WEP has been proven unsecured to use, but will keep out casual snooping. There are reports of WEP keys being broken in as little as 5 minutes therefore showing that it is very weak. The next step up is WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) or WPA2. After choosing which Algorithm to use either TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) which uses a key scheme based on RC4, but unlike WEP, TKIP provides per-packet key mixing, a message integrity check and a re-keying mechanism. TKIP ensures that every data packet is sent with its own unique encryption key. The other algorithm called AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). WPA2 combines both TKIP and AES to create one extremely secure network. Both WPA and WPA2 will create one of the most secure networks you can create. The next thing to do after you pick an algorithm is to enter a pass phrase. The best way to do this is to use all of the space you have with numbers, symbols, capital, and lower case words to create one really strong pass phrase. Once you have done that copy and paste the pass phrase across the network and paste it into a notepad on every desktop and laptop computer. Once you have done that it is now safe to save the settings in the router which will turn on the security options you have selected. This will throw all computers off the network which you will then have to go around and input the pass phrase into the log in screen after you try to re-enter your network. After you have done this your network is set up, secured, and ready to use throughout your house.

Now that you know what a wireless network is and how it works I'm going to tell you some main reasons why not to do a wireless network. The first reason is that it is very costly to do a wireless network. Even a small wireless network would cost you from 60 dollars to up in the hundreds of dollars. Most of the wireless technology has pushed the price of wired networks down to a very cheap price of where you could do one for around 20 to 30 dollars. Another issue is interference all of the wireless equipment that is described here is within the 2.4ghz range of frequencies and will be interfered by microwaves, cordless phones on the 2.4ghz standard, and even Bluetooth devices are on this frequency as well so this could very well lead to degraded speed and range.



 

posted by Lonestar Trent @ 11:49 PM