Networking With a Wireless Router

With the advent of wireless networking and laptops, we have greatly increased our ability to connect to the Internet without the use of a cord. There are a lot of advantages to wireless networking including convenience, mobility and low cost. There are also a few disadvantages which include lack of security, lack of range, lack of reliability, and lack of speed. While discussions on most of these disadvantages are beyond the scope of this article, I will touch on wireless security in the last paragraph. Suffice it to say for now that a wireless network is not as secure, reliable, fast, or far reaching as a hard wired network. That being said let us look at what it takes to implement a wireless network.

There are only a few things needed to implement and use a wireless network. You must have a connection to the internet, a wireless access point, and a computer with a wireless receiver. The internet connection plugs directly into the WAP. The WAP or Wireless Access Point is a router that takes the internet traffic and broadcasts it over a radio frequency, and also takes the traffic from the radio frequency and routes it out to the internet. There are at least two things that need to be configured on the WAP. First we must configure the internet part of it so that the internet can be accessed from router. Then we must configure the wireless part so that other computers can contact it over the air waves. Lastly, the computer must be configured. The wireless software gets loaded which helps to do all necessary configurations and sets up any security settings. After these are set up, we have implemented a working wireless network!

The problem that we run into with wireless is that the WAP broadcasts its signal in all directions for anyone within range to pick up. This has led to the advent of people known as wardivers, who go around trying to find unsecured or lightly secured wireless networks. When they find these networks, they use the unsuspecting WAP to access the internet for their own purposes. We can fight these wardivers by securing our wireless networks. Much detail of the security methods is beyond the scope of this article, but what security boils down to is that the WAP encodes the communications in a way that only the client can decode them. Anyone else in between will see only gibberish. Many of the WAPs come with a security method known as WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy. Never use this method as it is quite easy to get around. The method that should be used is WPA, or WiFi Protected Access. Both methods simply require that a passphrase be put in both the WAP and the client.

It should be noted that there are Wireless Routers that incorporate the Modem, Switch and Wireless Access Point and all router capabilities. In this case you will install the software in the same way as sown above. These devices help reduce the amount of physical space needed and take less electricity to operate due to fewer transformers. These devices usually have ports which will allow you to plug in several wired computers.

access point vs router