1. Charge up that battery

Wi-Fi sucks up battery juice quickly. Couple that with a 3G data link and you will find your battery-powered MiFi gizmo or Android phone running out of juice after a few hours of heavy use.

So make sure you charge your batteries before heading out. Or, if you expect a long day of surfing ahead, get a portable USB battery charger like the Zagg Sparq (www.zagg.com/accessories/zaggsparq.php).

2. Secure your Wi-Fi

This seems like a no-brainer, but in the rush to get online, many users end up sharing their 3G connection over an unsecured Wi-Fi link.

This means they may end up having Wi-Fi leechers in their network. This not only puts their PCs or iPads at risk, but also slows the surfing speed.

The solution is to encrypt your data and set a password. Most portable routers offer this feature, as do Android phones that support Wi-Fi tethering using a 3G link.

3. Stay within range

Many portable routers do not have powerful antennas, as they are not expected to cover an area bigger than a small hotel room. Some are designed to conserve battery and hence do not emit Wi-Fi signals that are as powerful as those from home routers.

Many portable and 3G routers are designed with their antennas hidden within the chassis. You will also find fewer antennas in these devices than in full-fledged home routers.

As such, avoid straying too far from your router. If the Wi-Fi signals have to pass through walls to reach your laptop, the connection speed suffers.

Mobile devices using a new radio band for free wireless service would not cause significant interference with cell phones employing a nearby band, the Federal Communications Commission has concluded from its tests.

The band was once used for microwave links between carrier facilities; but in 2006, citing the lack of any FCC plan at the time for assigning the spectrum, M2Z Networks proposed using it for a combination of free and paid wireless services that would reach 95 percent of U.S. residents. The startup proposed paying the government 5 percent of its revenue rather than going through a traditional license auction.

Last year, the government rejected M2Z’s plan, but FCC chairman Kevin Martin is now circulating a proposal that would set rules for an auction of the spectrum.

T-Mobile took issue with the FCC report, saying the agency based its conclusions on assumptions not used when the tests took place. M2Z, not surprisingly, praised the report.

“There is no longer any need for American consumers, the public interest, and the FCCs regulatory process to be held hostage” by carriers, M2Z said in a statement.

via PC World Dec 2008

What is Understanding Wireless?

You maybe argue that you don’t want to understand how wireless works to use it, however, basic understanding would helps when it comes to setup and troubleshooting. For example, people who have trouble setting up their computer, not understanding even the most basic details of how computer viruses spread has ensured not only that viruses spread like wildfire, but also that virus hoax e-mail messages spread as well. One of the overarching solutions for technology use is understanding the technology you’re using, at least to the degree that you can determine what might be going wrong.

Of course, that you don’t need to be an expert. but when it comes to anything to do with computer networking, knowing where to begin troubleshooting helps a great deal. In all my years of working with PCs, two things have always continued to astound us: the fact that PCs work at all, and the fact that you can get a group of them to work together. When you toss the concept of wireless into the bin, it goes beyond astonishment toward.

This book touches on all these topics, and gives you hands-on examples of how to do the things you need to do to make your wireless equipment work for you. Work through part of it and you’ll be able to use your devices more effectively. Work through all of it and you’ll be able to start answering other people’s questions, which, you’ll quickly discover, is something of a mixed blessing, but extremely valuable.

One other thing you’ll get from this book: a strong sense of what all those brain-mushing terms and abbreviations mean. You know the ones: 802.11b, 802.11g, Wireless-G, Wi-Fi, WEP, WPA, wireless broadband, and on and on and on. The computer world is filled with abbreviations, of course, but the wireless industry seems intent on giving us far more than we can handle. As you work through this book, you’ll encounter numerous wireless terms, but in all cases you’ll also find a comprehensible working definition for them, along with a readable explanation of what the technology behind each term actually does, not only how it works, but what it means to you.

Link: PC Magazine Wireless Solutions

Since 2006, when Wi-Fi information and services firm JiWire proclaimed Wi-Fi hotspots had topped the 100,000 mark globally, the list of hotspot locations has continued heading skyward. As of March, JiWire reports there were nearly 250,000 free and for-pay hotspot locations in 136 countries. (That number isn’t 100% all inclusive, but JiWire’s registry is likely the most comprehensive available.)

The good news for U.S. travelers is that more than a quarter of those hotspot locations are located stateside. Nevertheless, coverage is far from ubiquitous, even in densely populated urban areas where hotspots are most common. For example, Portland, Ore., the No. 1 hotspot city per capita, according to the Forbes 2008 America’s Most Wired Cities report, boasts only six hotspots per square mile, on average.

Factor in the realities that many hotspots have a range of 300 feet or less and that hotspots cluster where people congregate, and the picture turns into a surrealist landscape. Without advanced planning or the right tools, you can easily find yourself stranded in a Wi-Fi desert. The nearest Wi-Fi oasis might be only 1,000 feet away, but you’ll never know it’s there.

How can you prevent the grim scenario depicted above? One possibility is JiWire’s Wi-Fi Hotspot Helper for Windows XP. The device locates nearby Wi-Fi access points by cross-referencing your location against a database, stored offline on your PC, of more than 200,000 verified hotspots. Bonus features are a Wi-Fi mailer, which moves email through blocked hotspots, and enterprise-grade encryption and firewall security. The trial is free, but Vista users are out of luck. If you are a Skype or iPhone user, JiWire also offers a free finder utility without the security and email perks.

If you would rather map out hotspot locations before you leave home, or before leaving your last hotspot, JiWire’s searchable online database can assist. Other sites such as WiFinder, a good place for state-by-state searches; Wi-Fi Free Spot or Open WiFi Spots, each of which are great Web sites for dree Wi-Fi locations. Open WiFi Spots offers category guides, such as restaurants, public parks, and municipalities, and interactive mapping of Wi-Fi locations to get you going.

Several major restaurant and retail chains, including McDonald’s, Borders Books, and Barnes & Noble, offer fee-based Wi-Fi. At Panera Bread and hundreds of other cafés and fast-food restaurants, Wi-Fi is free. At Starbucks, a $5 Starbucks Card will soon give you two free hours per day of Internet usage. Companies such as Wayport and Boingo, which often power the Wi-Fi at hotels, restaurants, and retailers, offer prepaid cards or subscriptions that give you access at any of their locations.

To be continue tomorrow.

This is continue of yesterday post.

Upgrade your base station

Routers that are based on the Draft N specification incorporate MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antenna arrays. MIMO can improve range as well as speed. The Belkin Wireless G Plus MIMO Router released in 2007 use Draft N, and Belkin claims that the standard has twice the range of its predecessor. In the tests, range has improved a lots as other brand, such as Linksys and several other companies sell Draft N routers. Because those routers improve both transmission power and reception sensitivity, you can update just the gateway and continue using the older adapters on all your computers; the range of your network should still improve.

Add an antenna

You could also install a large, strong antenna on your base station so that it could blast out more-powerful signals. Many WiFi gateways have antennas that you can unscrew and replace with another antenna that produces a stronger signal. HyperLink Technologies has been selling antennas, and providing compatibility information about which gateways and wireless cards they work with, for years. The information is a bit technical, but it’s an exhaustive resource.

Apple has always kept its antennas inside the housing of its AirPort Base Stations; just a few of the 802.11g AirPort Extreme Base Stations came with an antenna jack for adding an external one. MacWireless has antennas, tools, and instructions for adding antennas to all AirPort models. MacWireless also offers a High Power 11g Access Point at $180. This unit has a regular-size antenna but a much more powerful radio, which provides more than 10 times the raw output power of most consumer gateways.

There is one downside to upgrading your antenna: while it can help your network, it can also mess up others. That’s because nearby networks may pick up your signals, and their performance will degrade as they try to cope with the barrage.

Upgrade your radio

If you have an older wireless network adapter without 802.11n built in, you can improve its range by attaching an 802.11n adaptor. QuickerTek nNano USB adaptor, for example, works with any Mac running Mac OS X 10.3 or later. The company also has a CardBus card and PCI Card that work with PowerPC models running Mac OS 10.3.9 or higher, and upgrade kits for Intel Macs starting at $100.

All of these adapters have one important limitation: they operate only in the crowded 2.4GHz band. But they can still improve range by transmitting farther and listening more carefully.

Add more base stations
Another way to extend network range is to build a network with many base stations, all with the same network name. WiFi adapters look for a network name, not a specific gateway. If one base station doesn’t cover your home or office, perhaps two or five or 10 might.

You could deploy a bunch of network base stations or AP, but that’d get expensive. Other 802.11g and 802.11n WiFi gateways start from around £20. In a standard network of multiple base stations, you configure one base station as the gateway, plugged into a broadband router. You connect additional base stations through Ethernet, or wirelessly through WDS (Wireless Distribution System), which is built into the base station and other gateways.

To make the multiple-base stations setup work, you need to configure the main base station as a gateway to your broadband connection.

You then configure the other base stations to pass traffic in bridge mode; that way, they leave the responsibility for assigning IP addresses to the primary base station. To set this up with the AirPort Extreme, go to AirPort Utility’s Internet pane, select the Internet Connection tab, and select Off (Bridge) from the Connection Sharing menu.

Plug the WAN (Wide Area Network) port from these subsidiary base stations into a LAN (Local Area Network) port on the primary base station, or into an Ethernet switch that’s plugged into the LAN port. For other base stations, you’ll have to check the manual.

As an alternative, you could use home power-line networking to connect base stations. Many power-line vendors offer combos consisting of a wireless access point with a built-in power-line adaptor; that way, you can extend your network without using WDS or Ethernet.

The Future is Wireless

The number of WiFi technologies queuing up becomes the next big thing in net technology grows every month, but WiMax (802.16-2004) is being tipped by many as the wireless technology to have in future.

At a meeting of the WiMax forum in Spain, it was said that the world’s first certified WiMax chipsets will be available by the end of the year 2005. Intel is already on the case, investing millions of dollar in this field. Intel and BT are currently trialling the technology in rural areas.

Brighton has been the UK trail area for large scale WiMax operation over the last year with Internet company Metranet delivering high speed web access using WiMax technology. Clients such as Brighton and Hove City Council, the University of Sussex and Brighton Media Centre have been using applications like VoIP, video conferencing and security camera streaming using WiMax.

WiMax boasts a data link of around 30 miles with a maximum speed of 70Mbps, although whether commercial speeds will match up to this remains to be seen. WiMax will have to face down competition from established wireless and wired rivals, such as mobile phone companies who dominate the long range communications market already.

The battle for the future wireless technology crown is just beginning.

WIFI Basic
Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, is the Wi-Fi Alliance’s name for a wireless standard, or protocol, used for wireless communication.

Wi-Fi allows you to connect to the internet from virtually anywhere at speeds of up to 54Mbps. Wi-Fi-enabled computers and handsets use radio technologies based on the IEEE 802.11 standard to send and receive data anywhere within the range of a base station.

THE WI-FI ALLIANCE
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a not-for-profit organization that certifies the interoperability of wireless devices built around the 802.11 standard. The goals of the Wi-Fi Alliance are to promote interoperability of devices based on 802.11, and, presumably, to promote and enhance the standard.

For better or worse, this is no neutral organization. The members of the Wi-Fi Alliance are manufacturers that build 802.11 devices. As of this writing, there are 205 companies that belong to the Wi-Fi Alliance and more than 900 products that have been certified as Wi-Fi interoperable.

The promise that the Wi-Fi Alliance makes is that if you buy an 802.11 device with the Wi-Fi seal of certification, the device will work seamlessly with any other Wi-Fi certified device.

More information about the Wi-Fi Alliance at the Alliance’s Web site, www.wi-fi.org.

source from The Wi-Fi Alliance

Good Read:
What’s on the wireless?
The Cell Phone Handbook: Everything You Wanted to Know About Wireless Telephony (But Didn’t Know Who or What to Ask) (Cell Phone Handbook)