Working In PJ’s Articles

Well, you’d be surprised. There really are all sorts of things you can do with wireless networks — you’re only really limited by your imagination! Here are a few weird and wonderful ideas to get you started, but don’t be afraid to try out anything else you think of.

Store Files in Your Car.

If you put a small wireless-enabled hard drive in your car, you can use it as a mobile file server, avoiding the need to send files around on the Internet or burn them to a CD. This can be especially good if you often move large files around. You could, for example, upload your files to the car-server when you’re at home, and then download them again when you get to work.

There are other uses of this too — you could, for example, send music files from your computer to the car to play on your journey, without having to physically move anything at all.

Build a Real ‘Network Neighbourhood’.

You can extend wireless networks as far as you want, using repeaters and directional antennas. If some of your neighbours put repeaters in their houses, then any networks in the area could be extended to cover a gradually larger range.

Ultimately, if you have co-operative neighbours, you could turn your whole street into a wireless hotspot: you could even all share one super-fast Internet connection, paying less per person than you usually would for a much slower one. There is even a name for this: a ‘freenet’ or ‘community net’. People who have tried it find that it makes people feel much closer to each other, bringing back long-lost social ties within the local community.

Bear in mind, though, that you’re basically running your own ISP if you decide to do this, with all the support issues that could involve. You might want to ask your ISP’s permission first, in case they get upset about you sharing your connection so freely. Whole books have been written about this topic — for more information, you might want to read one of them, such as Rob Flickenger’s ‘Building Wireless Community Networks’. If you live in a big city, you might even find that someone’s already trying to do it in your areas.

Make Cheap Phone Calls.

If you get a Bluetooth-enabled headset, you can use your wirelessly networked computer to make cheaper (or free) phone calls. Voice over IP (VoIP) software such as Skype makes it easy to call anyone in the world, and using a headset makes it even more convenient than using a phone — you can do whatever you want while you talk.

Most VoIP software is limited to calling other VoIP phones, which is free. Services like Skype, however, allow you to call real phone numbers too. Since the call is made in whatever country the number is in and then routed over the Internet to you, you can call worldwide for not much more than the cost of a local call. There are few things more fun than chatting to your friend half the world away for an hour and knowing it only cost you 50 cents — and that all they had to do was pick up the phone.

Watch Media on Your TV.

There is a new wave of wireless media devices that connect to your TV like a cable box or a DVD player, but allows your TV to play media files you have shared on your wireless network. If you use an operating system like Windows Media Center Edition or similar, it’s easy to watch videos from your computer on your TV — you even get a remote control. On top of that, you can record shows from your TV, TiVo-style, and then share these recordings over your wireless network.

You want things you digitally record on one TV to be viewable on all your TVs? Now they can be. Simply get two wireless-enabled digital recorders and they’ll form a network all on their own — simple as anything.

If you’ve got a wireless network for your computers already, well, you might get a bit excited about what I’m going to say next. How would you feel if your PDA, your mobile phone, your mp3 player and almost everything else you connect to your computer could be wireless too? You’d like that? Well, it’s already a reality. Read on…

Personal Area Network.

Using wireless networking with your personal gadgets is often called PAN, which stands for Personal Area Network. The idea is that, in the future, we’ll all have laptop computers with their batteries charged and no more need to connect any wires to them at all — you just place your Bluetooth device near the computer, and the computer sees it and can use it straightaway.

Bluetooth has been around and in-use since 1999, and it’s only getting more popular. It was designed to be secure, low cost, and easy to use from day one.

There are two classes of Bluetooth that are in popular use: class 1 and class 2. Class 2 is the most common and cheaper standard, allowing you to use a device that is up to 10 metres (32 feet) away. Class 1 is rarer, but you can still find devices that use it easily enough, and it has ten times the range: 100 metres or 320 feet.

How Does It Work?

Bluetooth is more flexible than 802.11 wireless networking, in exchange for the shorter range. Essentially, a Bluetooth-enabled computer has one Bluetooth receiver installed in it, and this receiver can then be used with up to 7 nearby Bluetooth devices. On the other end, wireless devices do not need to have Bluetooth installed if they support it — it is already integrated.

Like 802.11, Bluetooth works by using radio signals to create bandwidth. It is not, though, the same thing as an old-style wireless mouse or keyboard, which required a receiver to be plugged into one of your computers’ ports, and didn’t have range or stability anywhere near that of Bluetooth.

Many computers now come with built in Bluetooth, especially Apple Macs. If you want to add Bluetooth to a computer that doesn’t come with it pre-installed, you should probably use a USB to Bluetooth adapter, although internal Bluetooth devices to install in your computer are available. If you have a laptop and a spare PCMCIA slot, you can get Bluetooth cards for that too.

What Can You Do With Bluetooth?

Mobile phones with Bluetooth are very popular, and so are PDAs — the instant synchronisation of addresses and calendars to a computer is a useful feature. Other than that, almost anything that would usually use USB can be done using Bluetooth, including digital cameras, mp3 players, printers, and even mice and keyboards. If you take a look through the comprehensive list of Bluetooth ‘profiles’ (kinds of devices that could, in theory, be Bluetooth enabled), it includes cordless phones, faxes, headsets, and even video.

Basically, more than anything, Bluetooth is a replacement for USB: some say that while 802.11 wireless networking is wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth is wireless USB.

Not Just for Computers.

Part of the power of Bluetooth is that it isn’t just used to connect things to computers — it can be used to connect almost anything to anything else, if both things are Bluetooth-enabled and recognise each other.

Mobile phones, in particular, take advantage of this. Hands-free headsets often use Bluetooth to communicate with the phone. Some cars, for example, now have on-board computers that will connect with a Bluetooth phone and allow you to make hands-free calls, regardless of where the phone is in the car (even if you’ve left it in your bag in the trunk!)

On top of that, of course, Bluetooth devices can communicate with each other. This has led to some people sending messages from their Bluetooth PDAs to others in close range — not an especially useful feature, but quite fun. This is called ‘bluejacking’, and the first recorded instance of it was a man who sent a Bluetooth message to another man’s Nokia phone while they were in a bank together. What did the message say? ‘Buy Ericsson’.

Since then, it has become possible to send images by bluejacking, and it is widely believed to be the newest advertising medium — yes, it lets billboards send messages to your phone, a practice known as ‘bluecasting’. Whether you think that’s cool or annoying, of course, is your choice.

If you don’t want your network to fall victim to snooping or people ‘borrowing’ your bandwidth, then you’re going to need to lock down your network. Luckily for you, all wireless technology has encryption built in — it’s just a matter of turning it on.

WEP Vs. WPA.

Security on wireless networks does have a flaw, though — there are two completely incompatible standards, which makes it a pain to set up a whole network to use encryption.

How did this happen? Well, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was the original standard for encryption over 802.11 wireless networks. Back in 2001, though, a research paper was published called ‘Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4′. This paper demonstrated critical flaws in the security of WEP that made it trivial for someone to break into, if they wanted to.

Essentially, it is too easy to discover the secret ‘key’ used for WEP, and once you have the key, you can get into the network and stay in for as long as you want. People quickly recognised that it was almost useless to use WEP on their network — but by the time its weaknesses were discovered, the WEP method was built into almost every piece of wireless equipment out there.

The WEP standard had to be replaced, and in 2003 WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was introduced as its replacement, fixing most of its flaws. WPA is much more secure than WEP. Unfortunately, though, WPA took a long time to reach the market, and WPA devices were expensive when they were released. Combine this with the fact that WEP is still the default in a lot of software (because it’s supported by more devices), and you end up in the confused situation we’re in today.

Always Use WPA.

If you’re going to enable encryption, always use WPA. Devices bought after 2003 or so should be compatible with it, as the upgrade was made a mandatory part of the standard.

It is true that WEP is better than nothing — it will, at least, deter the casual intruder, who won’t try any more than double-clicking to get onto your network. WEP can also make you less of a target for wardrivers, since there will be so many completely open networks that they might as well use instead. However, it’s silly to use WE nowadays when WPA is so easily available.

Turning on Encryption.

Turning on encryption in Windows isn’t too difficult, but it does involve quite a lot of clicking — no wonder so few people bother.

The first step is to turn on encryption for your wireless router or access point. The exact method for this will vary between devices, but you can usually do it by visiting the router or access point’s configuration page in your web browser, finding the encryption settings, and then choosing WPA. If you have any trouble, refer to your manual.

Once you’ve done that, you need to change the encryption settings on your computers. Open the ‘View Available Wireless Networks’ screen by right-clicking on your wireless connection in the bottom-right of the screen and choosing it from the menu that appears. Then click ‘Change advanced settings’. Go to the Wireless Networks section of this box, click your network’s name, and then click Properties.

Now, where it says ‘Network authentication’, select WPA. Click OK on everything you’ve opened. Once you’ve done that — this is the really fun part — you’re going to have to do it for every computer on your network!

It’s Easier for New Networks.

While the process is quite troublesome for existing networks, it’s much easier for ones that haven’t been set up yet. You’ll still need to turn on encryption at the wireless router or access point, but once you’ve done that you can set up encryption as you set up the network using the Wireless Network Setup Wizard.

Unfortunately Windows now turns on WEP by default when you set up your wireless network. This means that each time you go through the wizard, you need to remember to tick the box on the third screen that says ‘Use WPA encryption instead of WEP’. Still, it’s easier than changing the settings manually later on.