What Is Wi-Fi

Wireless technology has become a prominent field in the area of networking. It has many uses. The most important being portability and mobility. With the help of wireless technology people now can send and receive messages, phone calls, faxes, read files, login on remote machines etc. and perform all the above mentioned duties from anywhere on land, sea, or air.

The technology of wifi has stormed the field of wireless networking. There are numerous applications of wifi. Nowadays it is very useful and critical in business world because today's business gives more emphasis on the communication of the information. Wifi also finds usage at home, workplaces, shops, any public places etc. the study of the advantages and the risks involved in the wifi system is necessary in order to exploit the full use of it.

About wireless networks.

The transfer of information from node to another with the help of electromagnetic waves is referred to as wireless communication. Signals are normally broadcast through free space and are available to anyone who has device capable of receiving them. A new technique of wireless data transmission known as wifi (wireless fidelity) has been developed. Wifi uses the radio waves to transmit the data. It uses the frequency of 2.4GHz and uses SSID for addressing purposes. SSID stands for Service Set Identifier. It uses a set of characters or numbers addresses so that the sending access point can be identified. Any access point which wants to receive the signal must have the same set of SSID as that of sender's SSID.

Advantages.

The usage of wifi system has numerous advantages. The most important advantage is the cost factor. Since there are free hotspots or access points, a free connection between two nodes cab be established in the network.
A wireless network also provides the facilities of mobility. Hence it is now possible to have a wireless connection, free of hard wired connections.It is also easy to install and configure wifi network. It is also easy and generally faster, internet connections are possible by wifi networks.

Dangers and risks.

Since wifi is a wireless connection it uses the shared wireless space. Hence it is possible that many signals of similar frequencies can interfere with each other and cause unnecessary distortions. This leads to the loss of data and the received data may get corrupted. Hence wifi does not ensure an error free connection.
Another danger involved is related to security of data. It is possible that users who are new to the wifi network may setup an insecure access point, without setting the various security configurations.
It is also possible that some miscreants may use the same default SSID everywhere to access the secured access points illegally. The best way to counter these dangers is to learn and study the configuration of the secured network and make it a rule to always use a different SSID for access point and never keep the default value.


Sunday, June 29, 2008

To WIFI or Not to WIFI

To WIFI or Not To WIFI

Many people are confused with the huge amount of contradicting information on WIFI. I want to make this as simple as possible.

There are two main types of network setups. One is wired and the other is Wireless. WIFI is great for homes and small offices wanting a fast way to build a new network setup or upgrade an existing one. WIFI is especially good for families with multiple PCs wanting to share an Internet connection. But keep in mind that even though WIFI producing companies state that WIFI is secure, they don't hold a candle when it comes to cable based networks. Cable based networks are much more secure and offer higher transfer rates. On the other hand cabling needs additional work and planning to fully implement like trucking and In-wall Installation.

So if you want to install a WIFI DSL router for the soul purpose of sharing your internet connection amongst family members, then make sure to turn off File & Printing Sharing. This can be accessed from network connections located in the Control Panel.

In conclusion; data sensitive companies should stir away from WIFI for present time and the near future. But if WIFI is used just for sharing the internet connection, there would be no problem there. Home users can safely use WIFI but must make sure that no sensitive data resides on the PC (E.g. data from work) and secure the connection with a user name and password.

Another thing; always choose a Router over a Switch and a Switch over a Hub for cable based networks. The three devices mentioned earlier are all used to connect different computers together. But the Router is the most secure, smart and highly customizable of the three. The Switch on the other hand is easy to use with no configuration needed and costs so much less than a Router. Forget about Hubs they are plain stupid.

**You are free to publish this article by any delivery method you see fit. But you are kindly asked keep the article intact and as is.

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