Your Guide To Wireless

Change the SSID

Another big step in securing your home wireless network is not to announce that you have one. Public or corporate wireless networks may need to broadcast their existence so that new wireless devices can detect and connect to them. However, for your home, you are trying to prevent rogue wireless devices from detecting and connecting to your network. The wireless router or access point has a Service Set Identifier (SSID). Basically, the SSID is the name of the wireless network. By default, wireless routers and access points will broadcast a beacon signal about every 1/10 of a second, which contains the SSID among other things. It is this beacon which wireless devices detect and which provides them with the information they need to connect to the network. Your wireless network will most likely only have a handful of devices. Rather than relying on this beacon signal, you can simply manually enter the SSID and other pertinent information into each client to allow them to connect to your wireless network. Check the product manual that came with your wireless equipment to determine how to disable the broadcasting of the SSID. Your device will come with a default SSID which is often simply the name of the manufacturer, such as Linksys or Netgear. Even with the SSID broadcasting turned off, it is important that you not use the default SSID.There are only a handful of manufacturers of home wireless equipment, so it wouldn’t take long to guess at the possible SSIDs if you leave it set for the default.Therefore, you need to change this, and preferably not to something equally easy to guess, like your last name. [tags]Change the SSID[/tags]

First Step To Secure Your Home Wireless Network

Regardless of what protocol your wireless equipment uses, some basic steps should be taken to make sure other users are not able to connect to your wireless network and access your systems or hijack your Internet connection for their own use. Change Default Username and Password To begin with, change the username and password required to access the administrative and configuration screens for your wireless router. Most home wireless routers come with a Web-based administrative interface.The default IP address the device uses on the internal network is almost always 192.168.0.1. Finding out what the default username and password are for a given manufacturer is not difficult.The equipment usually comes configured with something like “admin” for the username, and “password” for the password. Even without any prior knowledge about the device or the manufacturer defaults, an attacker could just blindly guess the username and password in fewer than ten tries.With a default IP address and default administrative username and password, your wireless router can be hacked into even by novices. Make sure you change the username to something that only you would think of. Just like renaming the Administrator account on your computer, you want to choose a username that won’t be just as easy to guess as “admin” or whatever the default username was.You also want to choose a strong password that won’t be easily guessed or cracked. Lastly, you should change the internal IP subnet if possible.The 192.168.x.x address range is for internal use only.A large percentage of those who use this address range use 192.168.0.x as their subnet, which makes it easy to guess. You can use any number from 0 to 254 for the third octet, so choose something like 192.168.71.x so potential attackers will have to work a little harder. Remember, the goal is to make it difficult for attackers or malware to penetrate your system. Nothing you do will make your network 100-percent impenetrable to a dedicated and knowledgeable attacker. But, by putting various layers of defense in place such as complex passwords, personal firewalls, antivirus software, and other security measures, you can make it sufficiently hard enough that no casual attacker will want to bother.

Wireless Network Protocols

A variety of wireless network protocols are currently in use.The most common equipment for home users now is to be either 802.11g or 802.11 pre-n and 802.11a/b equipment is going obsolete very soon.The most common protocol, particularly for home users, has been 802.11gb; however, 802.11 pre-n is becoming the default standard because of its increased speed and compatibility with existing 802.11 networks.The following is a brief overview of the different protocols: 802.11b Wireless network equ...

The Basics of Wireless Networks

Think about how a wireless network affects the security of your network and your computers. When you have a wired network, you have only one way in more or less. If you put a firewall on the network cable between your computers and the public Internet, your computers are shielded from most unauthorized access.The firewall acts as a traffic cop, limiting and restricting access into your network through that single access point. Now you throw a wireless device on your network. It doesn’t matter if it’s one computer with a wireless network adapter or a wireless router or access point, the results are the same: you are now broadcasting data through the air.Your “access point” is now all around you. Rather than a single point of access that can be easily protected, your access point is now three dimensional, all around you, at various ranges, from the next room to the house next door to the roadside in front of your home. Wireless equipment often boasts of ranges over 1,000 feet.The reality is that unless there are no obstructions, the temperature is above 75 and less than 78, the moon is in retrograde and it’s the third Tuesday of the month, the range will be more like 100 feet. But if your wireless data can make it the 75 feet from your wireless router in the basement to where you are checking your e-mail while watching a baseball game as you sit on the couch in your living room, it can also make it the 60 feet over to your neighbor’s house or the 45 feet out to the curb in front of your home. Although standard off-the-shelf equipment doesn’t generally have tremendous range, the wardrivers, a term used to describe actively scouting areas specifically looking for insecure wireless networks to connect to, have homegrown super antennas made with Pringles cans and common household items from their garage that can help them detect your wireless network from a much greater range. It is important that you take the time to understand the security features of your wireless equipment and make sure you take the appropriate steps to secure your network so that unauthorized users can’t just jump onto your connection. Not only are your own computers exposed to hacking if an attacker can join your network, but they may initiate attacks or other malicious activity from your Internet connection which might have the local police knocking on your door to ask some questions. A wireless network uses radio or microwave frequencies to transmit data through the air.Without the need for cables, it is very convenient and offers the flexibility for you to put a computer in any room you choose without having to wire network connections. It also offers you the ability to roam through your home freely without losing your network connection. In order to connect to the Internet, you will still need a standard connection with an ISP. Whether you use dial-up or a broadband connection like DSL or a cable modem, the data has to get to you some way before you can beam it into the air.Typically, you would connect your DSL or cable modem to a wireless router and from there the data is sent out into the airwaves. If you already have a wired router on your network and want to add wireless networking, you can attach a wireless access point to your router.Any computers that you wish to connect to the wireless network will need to have a wireless network adapter that uses a wireless protocol compatible with your router or access point. Recomended Reading : Wireless Telecommunications FAQs [tags]Basics of Wireless Networks[/tags]

Stereo Bluetooth Part 2

Continue from part 1 Installing the USB dongles was simple. They are smaller than your average thumb drive, so they are also unobtrusive. Installing the dongle and the drivers from the CD took less than 10 minutes. Once installed, the driver software installs a My Bluetooth Places icon to your desktop and a small icon in your system tray. Establishing connections to a Bluetooth device called pairing is as easy as running a setup wizard and typing the four-digit PIN for the device. (Different software drivers and Bluetooth devices work differently, of course, but in our experience most Bluetooth devices are similarly easy to install and configure.) Up to seven “slave” devices can be simultaneously paired with a single “master,” with the master in this case being the PC. After a device is initially paired, establishing a connection between the master and slave is simple. In the case of Anycom’s software, for example, you can simply right-click the system tray icon to pull down a menu of devices and select the one to which you wish to connect. Unfortunately, not every Bluetooth-enabled device supports all Bluetooth profiles, and it’s important to verify the profiles supported by your Bluetooth gadgets before purchasing an accessory. For example, Motorola RAZR V3m test phone supports HSP (Headset Profile), HFP, DUN (Dial-Up Networking Profile), OPP (Object Push Profile), and FTP (File Transfer Protocol), but does not support A2DP. This was disappointing, given that one of the RAZR’s selling points is that it can double as a music player. We obstinately tried to make it connect to our Bluetooth speakers anyway, to which the RAZR responded with a “Device Not Supported” error message or something similar. Lesson learned Before buying Bluetooth A2DP devices, make sure any Bluetooth devices you own or plan to buy are A2DP-compatible. Check the owner’s manual or manufacturer’s Web site for technical specifications. The PhoneScoop website is a good resource for finding specific technical information, including which specific Bluetooth profiles are supported, for various cellular phones Get Ready To Rock The real magic of Bluetooth and A2DP happens when you have the appropriate A2DP audio accessories: some A2DP speakers and an A2DP headset. You can have some fun with Anycom’s BIWAS-20 Bluetooth speakers and the Anycom BSH-100 headset. The BIWAS-20 speakers are a simple 2.1, 20W rms (root mean square) portable speaker system, suitable for a bookshelf or mounting on the wall. The BIWAS-20 weighs less than 10 pounds and makes the perfect shelf or wallmounted speaker system. It wouldn’t be too unwieldy if you wanted to take it to a sales presentation, although you might want something more portable for longdistance travel. The BIWAS-20 is easy to transport and set up anywhere without the hassle of lugging lots of equipment or having to plug in anything more than a single power cable. All you need is for the speakers to be within range (roughly 30m [indoors] or 80m [outdoors]) of your laptop, PC, or portable music player, and you can play any audio wherever you want. Actual range may vary depending on conditions. With a portable external speaker system at your disposal, all you need for the road is a nice set of headphones. Anycom also supplied us with their BSH-100 headphones. The BSH-100 combines a Bluetooth headset suitable for use with a cellular phone and stereo headphones. It includes an unobtrusive, detachable microphone for cell phone connections, so two devices virtually ubiquitous amongst office workers and cubicle jockeys. Pairing the headset with the PC and cell phone let you listen to tunes and still pick up calls on the cell phone. We could even walk all the way to the printer and grab a printout without losing the connection to our tunes or our cell phone, as long as we stayed within roughly 10m of our PC. Using the BSH-100 headset with our PC and cell phone simultaneously was probably the defining moment for us with Bluetooth and A2DP. When a call rang our cell phone, the headset automatically paused the music and switched to the call we answered. The music resumed when we hung up the all at which point A2DP went officially from “neat-maybe-use-it” technology to “very-cool-I-want-this” technology.

Take Full Advantage Of Stereo Bluetooth

Although Bluetooth may have been the sole province of the technologically elite a few years ago, it’s an increasingly popular standard for cellular phones and other computing devices. It’s probably safe to assume that it has become mainstream. Bluetooth uses short-range radio frequencies to allow a variety of devices (personal digital assistants, cellular phones, mice, keyboards, printers, scanners, cameras, and music players, for example) to communicate with each other and transfer or share data. As an evolving standard, Bluetooth still has plenty of room to grow, and new and improved capabilities are still being developed for it. Bluetooth is actually composed of many different profiles, different instruction sets that are used for a variety of functions. For example, the HFP (Hands-Free Profile) is the Bluetooth profile that enables the phone calls via wireless headsets. Bluetooth Meets Stereo Audio A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) is a Bluetooth profile that lets Bluetooth devices send and receive mono or stereo audio signals. In other words, it’s one more reason to throw on your wireless headset and tune out the world, because A2DP lets you listen to audio (Internet radio or MP3 files, for example) from a Bluetooth A2DP-compatible MP3 player, cell phone, or PC through a set of A2DP-compatible headphones or external speakers. Better still, you can listen to your music and pick up an incoming call without switching between headsets. In other words, Bluetooth/A2DP gives you the freedom to listen to your music unfettered by wires. Of course, this might mean upgrading your cellular phone or buying a new Bluetooth headset. A2DP does have some potential applications for use in the professional world. You could, for example, play the audio for a business presentation wirelessly through portable, Bluetooth-enabled speakers. That’s pretty slick and might impress a few board members, but it’s not really the type of fun for which A2DP was intended. The primary purpose of A2DP is to free you from speaker and headphone wires, and it will likely be far more popular and useful to you in a recreational capacity. The “fun” way to use A2DP is to wirelessly pipe your favorite tunes or other audio from a PC, mobile phone or portable music player to a set of A2DP-compatible speakers or headphones. Although most laptops and PCs aren’t Bluetooth/A2DP-compatible out of the box, you can use a simple USB dongle to add Bluetooth/A2DP functionality. You can use used two Anycom USB adapters, the USB-200 and the USB-250, to quickly and easily add Bluetooth/A2DP functionality to both a desktop and a laptop PC. The main difference between the USB-250 and the USB-200 is that the USB-250 has a maximum range of 120m, whereas the USB-200 has a maximum range of 30m. The USB-250 is also equipped with flash memory, so you can potentially upgrade it to support additional Bluetooth profiles. Next post, we will look at how these devices works. [tags]Stereo Bluetooth[/tags]

Wireless Routers Connect You To The Internet (Part 2)

There are currently two mainstream wireless networking implementations: 802.11b and 802.11g. The first of these to achieve widespread acceptance was 802.11b, operating over the 2.4GHz frequency and capable of up to 11Mbps under ideal conditions. 802.11b can operate at distances up to 300 feet (indoors), though the transfer rate drops as the distance between devices increases. Although the 802.11b standard is a bit dated, for many users its transfer rate is perfectly suitable. Although 802.11b routers and wireless cards are still commonplace, a newer standard, 802.11g, is rapidly supplanting it. The principal advantage of 802.11g over the 802.11b standard is a higher transfer rate; 802.11g can operate at speeds of up to 54Mbps. The downside to 802.11g is a shorter range: 802.11g can reach approximately 100 feet. You can use a mix of 802.11b and 802.11g devices in a wireless network, but the speed of the network will drop down to the 802.11b standard. This allows you to upgrade an existing network without having to replace all of your wireless components in one fell swoop. In addition to the two main wireless implementations, there are several additional ones that are either vendor customizations or standards that never achieved widespread adoption. Many of these will interoperate with the previously mentioned standards, but be sure to check with the vendor before purchasing. 802.11a. Although the 802.11a standard preceded 802.11g by several years, it never achieved the widespread success enjoyed by either 802.11b or 802.11g. 802.11a operates over the 5GHz frequency, with a transfer rate comparable to 802.11g’s 54Mbps. 802.11a has roughly the same range as 802.11g (100 feet) but is more sensitive to interference from walls and other architectural components. Outside of a few early adopters who jumped at that speed increase over 802.11b, the 802.11a routers and other wireless equipment you’ll find are dual systems that include either 802.11b or 802.11g in addition to the 802.11a components. 108G and G Plus MIMO. The 802.11 standard is devised by the IEEE, but wireless vendors aren’t required to hew to this standard. In an effort to boost the speed and range of their wireless offerings, many of these vendors have implemented alternative designs that attempt to leapfrog the current 802.11 standards. The primary method of achieving higher transmission speeds and distances is by implementing MIMO (Multiple Input/Multiple Output) on network devices. MIMO uses two antennas to make simultaneous 802.11g connections. In theory this offers speeds of up to 108Mbps and ranges approaching 1,000 feet. Although the MIMO technique offers promise, there have been reports that these implementations can interfere with other wireless networks. When the standard is finally codified, 802.11n will replace these esoteric wireless implementations. Compatibility Although vendors try to ensure that your wireless components play nicely together, there are some fundamentals that need to be in place before you can mix and match components. Generally speaking, a router using 802.11b should work with any vendor’s 802.11b network cards. The same is true for 802.11g and 802.11a. On the other hand, mixing components can have serious performance implications, if they work at all. For example, 802.11g is backward compatible with 802.11b; you can use an 802.11g router with 802.11b network cards. But, the transfer rate will be 11Mbps. If you have an 802.11g router, one desktop with an 802.11b network card, and a notebook with an 802.11g card, both the desktop and notebook will transfer data at 11Mbps. The weakest (slowest) link determines the actual throughput. Most of the MIMO systems are also backward compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g, but 802.11a is incompatible with almost all other 802.11 standards unless you have a dual-band wireless router. Wireless routers are an affordable way to create a fast network without stringing cables throughout your home. With speeds that dwarf most Internet connections, the current standards provide robust networking wherever you want to use your computer. [tags]Wireless Routers[/tags]