5 Reasons Why You Need a Wireless Network.

by: Marek Petynka

As far as I'm concerned, wireless networks are one of the best inventions in history -- they really are the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, really, bread is easy enough to cut yourself, but have you ever tried to wire up a network? So, in the spirit of spreading the word, I'm going to give you five reasons why you need a wireless network.

Share Internet Access.

Wireless networking gives you a cheap and easy way to share one Internet connection between multiple computers, eliminating the need for more than one modem. You can even add new computers to your network simply by plugging in a wireless card and switching them on -- they get an Internet connection straightaway! There aren't many wired networks that can say that.

Share Files and Printers.

A wireless network gives you access to your files wherever you are in your home, and makes it easy to synchronise the data on a laptop with a home computer. It is much easier to send files between computers with a wireless network than it is to send them by email, or even by burning them to a CD.

Plus, with the printer connected, you can also write things wherever you want, press print, and go and collect them from a printer connected to another computer -- printers that are plugged into one of the computers on the network are shared between all the computers automatically.

Play Games.

You might have seen an option in your favourite game to play over a LAN. Well, wireless networks are LANs, which means that your whole family can play that game together -- without needing the computers to be anywhere near each other. It's far more fun to play against real people you know than to play against random people over the Internet, not to mention that the game will work much faster. You could even invite your friends to bring their computers and join in -- a 'LAN party'!

An added benefit is that wireless equipment lets you easily connect any games consoles you or your kids might have to the Internet, and start playing online. It's far easier to play online with a wirelessly connected Xbox or PlayStation 2 than to have to connect it to your modem every time.

Always On.

A big factor in the spread of broadband was that it let Internet connections be always-on, without needing to dial in. Well, wireless networking lets network connections be always-on, meaning that any of your computers can connect to the Internet whenever you want! You can take laptops from room to room, and it doesn't matter -- they'll always have access. Plus, there's not even any need to set up a username and password system, as wireless networks work without logging in. It's just so convenient!

No More Wires.

This, of course, is the biggest reason why you should switch your network over to wireless. Wires are inconvenient, expensive, ugly and dangerous -- you'll be delighted to see the back of them.

The average Ethernet wire doesn't cost that much per metre, but once you've bought enough metres to do whatever you need to do, well, it tends to add up quickly. Not only that, but if you want to run your wire between rooms or floors, you have to knock holes in the walls -- which might not even be allowed if you're renting. I know plenty of people in rented apartments who had to keep their network confined to one room until they went wireless. With wireless networking, well, you can even take your computer outside, if you want to!

No more wires also means no more spaghetti all over the floor and in the corners. Not only does this improve the safety of your home, as it's all too easy to trip over exposed wires, but it also means that you don't have to go to all the trouble of packing all the wires up and re-connecting them at the other end when you move. It also means that you don't have to examine every wire for damage if your Internet connection breaks down.

Convinced?

If you're excited, then that's great -- keep reading these articles for advice on how to set everything up. If you don't think it's for you yet, well, don't give up on it -- I'm sure you'll come round when you realise just how easy and cheap wireless really is.

Marek Petynka is the Publisher of the Marek Recommends Newsletter. You can subscribe by visiting his web site at: http://marekrecommends.com and receive FREE eCourse That Will Teach You How To Earn....... Multiple Income Online..........

How Do Wireless Networks Work?

by: Marek Petynka

Wireless networks work using radio waves instead of wires to transmit data between computers. That's the simple version. If you're curious to know what's going on in more detail, then it's all explained in this article.

Ones and Zeros.

I'm sure you know that computers transmit data digitally, using binary: ones and zeros. This is a way of communicating that translates very well to radio waves, since the computer can transmit ones and zeros as different kinds of beep. These beeps are so fast that they're outside a human's hearing range -- radio waves that you can't hear are, in fact, all around you all the time. That doesn't stop a computer from using them, though.

Morse Code.

The way it works is a lot like Morse code. You probably already know that Morse code is a way of representing the alphabet so that it can be transmitted over radio using a dot (short beep) and a dash (long dash). It was used manually for years, and became a great way of getting information from one place to another with the invention of the telegraph. More importantly for this example, though, it is a binary system, just like a computer's ones and zeros.

You might think of wireless networking, then, as being like Morse code for computers. You plug a combined radio receiver and transmitter in, and the computer is able to send out its equivalent of dots and dashes (bits, in computer-speak) to get your data from one place to another.

All About Frequencies.

You might wonder, though, how the computer could possibly transmit enough bits to send and receive data at the speed it does. After all, there must be a limit on how much can be sent in a second before it just becomes useless nonsense, right? Well, yes, but the key to wireless networking is that it gets around this problem.

First of all, wireless transmissions are sent at very high frequencies, meaning that more data can be sent per second. Most wireless connections use a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (2.4 billion cycles per second) -- a similar frequency to mobile phones and microwave ovens. As you might know, though, a frequency this high means that the wavelength must be very short, which is why wireless networking only works over a limited area.

In addition, wireless networks make use of a technique known as 'frequency hopping'. They use dozens of frequencies in the range they are given, and constantly switch between them. This makes wireless networks more immune to interference from other radio signals than they would be if they only transmitted on one frequency.

Access Points.

The final step is when it comes to all the computers on a network sharing Internet access. This is done using a special piece of wireless equipment called an access point. Access points are more expensive than wireless cards for one computer, as they contain radios that are capable of talking to around 100 computers at the same time, and sharing out access to the Internet between them. Dedicated access points are only really essential for larger networks, though -- if you only have a few computers, it is possible to use one of them as the access point, or you could just get a wireless router.

They Understand Each Other.

That's all well and good, then, but how does wireless equipment made by entirely different companies manage to work together when this is all so complicated? Well, the answer is that there are standards that all wireless devices follow. These standards are technically called the 802.11 standards, and are set by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). It is thanks to people sticking to their standards that wireless networking is so easy and cheap to use today.

You Don't Need to Worry.

If all this talk of frequencies has you a little worried, you don't need to be -- wireless networking hardware and software handles all of this automatically, without you needing to do a thing. Don't think that you're going to have to tell one wireless device what frequency another is using, because it's just not going to happen, alright? Wireless networking, for all its complicated workings, is really far more simple to use than you'd ever expect.

Marek Petynka - Publisher of Marek Recommends Online Opportunities:
http://marekrecommends.com

What is Wireless Networking?

by: Marek Petynka

Wireless networking is just what it sounds like -- a way of creating networks without any wires! If this sounds exciting to you, then read on.

With a wireless network, you can create radio connections between computers that let them communicate and connect to the Internet without you having to go to all the trouble of connecting them with wires. The computers don't even need to have a clear path for the signal, as the wireless signal can go through walls and between floors easily.

Where Did It Come From?

The story of wireless networking is a rather strange one. It is basically an application of a technology called frequency hopping which was, believe it or not, invented by the actress Hedy Lamarr and a musician named George Antheil, back in the 1940s. Seriously, do a web search -- I promise I'm not pulling your leg here.

They received a patent for their invention, which was intended to help in the war effort. Hedy was Jewish, but had been made to hide it and socialise with Hitler as a young woman -- she had to drug her husband and run away to London to escape her native Austria. The importance of what they'd done, however, wasn't recognised until many years later.

The U.S. military adopted the technique in the '60s, using it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Hedy never saw any money from it as the patent had expired (don't worry, she was a film star!), but she was given a Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1997, three years before her death.

Wireless at Home.

When most people talk about wireless networks, they are talking about wireless LANs (local area networks). A local area network doesn't mean that it covers your whole neighbourhood -- the 'local area' in question can be only one building, such as your house. So if you want wireless networking in your home, you want a wireless LAN.

Once people have wireless in their home, they always seem to act as if there's been an absolute miracle. After years of drilling holes in the walls and running wires all over the place, suddenly seeing them gone is really amazing.

The Myths.

Wireless networking is expensive. Well, wireless networking used to be expensive when it was new, but now the prices have come way down thanks to competition and mass production. There are hundreds of manufacturers of wireless equipment, with something for every budget. Your costs will depend on how many computers you want to connect and how far apart they are, but a typical family should still be able to do it for less than $100 overall. If you're willing to leave one of the computers on whenever you're using the other one, you could do it for as little as $20! Best of all, once you've spend the money, there's nothing more to pay after that.

Wireless networking is hard. Again, this myth is a holdover from the early days of wireless. It used to be very difficult, with you needing to fiddle endlessly with the configuration on each computer just to get the simplest things to work. Now, though, Windows supports wireless out of the box, and setting it up is easier than ever. You can usually plug in what you've bought, put the CD in the computer and then sit back and watch it all work perfectly!

Wireless networking is insecure. You might think it's dangerous to have all your personal data floating around in the air for anyone to read. Well, if you want, it's dead easy to enable encryption for your wireless signals. It's already difficult for outsiders to intercept wireless signals at all, and they certainly won't be able to decode them as well.

Not Just at Home.

It was home users that were quickest to adopt wireless technology, willing to pay any amount to finally be free of needing to run wires all over their house. Since then, though, the technology has started to spread to offices, universities, and all sorts of other places.

Chains of coffee shops and cafes have found that their customers will stay for hours if they offer wireless Internet access, and it's also becoming more common in hotels and airports. This means that once you set up a laptop for wireless, it becomes far more portable than it ever was before.

Marek Petynka - Publisher of Marek Recommends Online Opportunities:
http://marekrecommends.com