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If you haven't been asleep or fighting a war in a foreign country for the last couple of years you must be aware of the wireless phenomenon that has swept the digital world. This article is not for you so go back to sleep and wait for the world to pass you by. Intel has done a great job of selling us the need for wireless computing. Most of us are not sure why but it sounds good so we want it and buy it. If only to play in a "HOT SPOT" or just to have something to talk about at the next cocktail party you go to. But what is really happening to us and what do we do with it. I'm glad you asked so I'll tell you.
We do the same that we've done with anything that's new and technical. We go buy it, plug it in and use it as best we can out of the box. Come 'on, you remember the days when your VCR blinked "12:00" for months on end? How many of you when you get the Home Theatre system hooked up at your house with the 5.1 digital surround sound realized it didn't sound as good as it did in the sound room? Maybe proper positioning and setting the speaker levels with a sound meter might make a difference. But hey, the salesman doesn't want to scare you off from a sale by telling you that you might have a lot of work once you get home setting the thing up to REALLY work properly. Or better yet pay someone else to do it and YES, label all the wires so when you do move or clean behind it you know how to put the blasted thing back together.
I'm starting to get off track so back to wireless. As you know from my previous articles and your own personal experience, technical support is on the endangered species list unless you want to pay for it. So all the manufactures of this stuff send it out so dumbed down that any yahoo has fair chance of making it work. What does this mean you may ask? It means that any one of your neighbors or co-workers has complete access to your internet connection and maybe, just maybe all the files on your PC. I bet you didn't know how philanthropic you really are letting the everyone use your DSL or cable line. You wonder how I know, easy, I don't have a broadband connection at home but neighbor does! I don't care how much Toby puts down 802.11B, I picked up an EXCELLCENT signal strength through two exterior walls. I can take our WAY COOL Ferrari notebook all the way to the other end of my home and connect quite well on POOR signal strength. The only downside is every once and awhile I have to go over to their house a reset the LINKSYS wireless unit. It's a good thing I have a key.
Now look, I may be a bandwidth thief but I rationalize this by saying my neighbors are never home and I shouldn't let all that good bandwidth go to waste. I also like to think I'm monitoring his connection to check for problems. But I'm one of the good guys. One of our clients had a person with a Mobil Crackjacking/Hacking unit in a van hack into a church organization and wreak all sorts of malicious havoc. My Erstwhile business partner calls it "WAR DRIVING" which got its name from the movie "WAR CRIMES." At our office we also can connect to yet another wireless network named "LINKSYS." I guess I felt guilty about my other nefarious adventures so I made a concerted effort to be the "GOOD SAMARITIAN" to find the business next to my office and inform them of their complete lack of security but to no avail. Everyone I talked looked at me funny and couldn't understand why I was bothering them. Oh well, So much for meeting the neighbors. And to top everything off we now have a wireless unit installed in our shop for testing your notebooks and desktops to make sure the wireless functions properly. But alas, we too are guilty of lax security by turning off MAC address authentication because it was too much of a hassle to configure a system every time I wanted to do a quick check. I guess the only difference between me and you, the hapless masses, is that we made the choice to turn off security. Even so, I turn the unit off when we do not need it.
There's a local hotel that I frequent that charges $150.00 for an internet connections in its banquet rooms for those people who need it for their meetings and seminars. But lo and behold, me and my trusty Ferrari once again connect to the Hotels wireless network. When I mentioned this to the staff they told me to be quiet about it.(Hah, I smell a cover-up) They explained that if they can get people to shell out $150.00 they would rather not give up this gravy train.
What's going on in case you haven't figured it out already is that most of the companies are shipping out this stuff with all the security features disabled because it makes them easier to setup(as I explained in my second paragraph). This cuts down immeasurably on the amount of support calls they have to handle while giving a good part of the US population free Internet access. So I look at it this way. If one random person, which is me, has this much wireless stuff going on around him. What about you? The undiscovered frontier is not space but your neighbors DSL connection. Luckily nearly everyone is still way too ignorant about the whole issue to do any harm but there are legions of young people growing up on this stuff that have no problem taking advantage of your lack of concern for security. I have a hard enough time trying to talk you into getting ad DSL router for even just one PC to give you protection from hackers, now I have to get you also to beef up security in your home and business. Alas, a prophet's work is never done, as the world refuses to see all things the way I do.
So if I have aroused your curiosity try clicking on the little "WIRELESS NETWORKING ICON" in the notification area of your wireless enabled PC and see if any available wireless networks pop up. Who knows? You too may get free internet from your neighbor next door whose dog poops all over your yard despite your many complaints. Now's your chance to get even by pooping on his PC. Just kidding!
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