by Matt Lawless

Created on: February 15, 2007   Last Updated: May 01, 2007

For many people, wireless Internet is a great mystery. This can be compared to the challenge people faced when trying to understand how radio works for the first time.

Wireless is relatively straightforward. It is the equivalent of taking a lead (Ethernet cable) and plugging it between your PC and your phone line or broadband system. What happens is that the information that needs to get to your computer is converted by a hardware device (wireless access point) and sent via a radio signal to your PC where it is turned back into data (by a wireless, or Wi-Fi, adapter that sits in your PC).

For those of you thinking that you have wireless but don't seem to have a wireless access point, these are frequently built into broadband routers for consumer systems.

Wireless Internet works at different speeds, and these speeds are differentiated by the type of wireless card & access point. You will currentlty come across 2 main access speeds and terminology.

- 11Mbps (11 Million bits per second) - Referred to as 802.11b
- 54Mbps (54 Million bits per second) - Referred to as 802.11g

You will also start to see reference to 802.11n which is a newer draft of a high-speed wireless communications standard which will allow for up to 540Mbps. Some vendors are already shipping in this format so this is likely to take on widespread adoption in 2007.

The final important aspect about wireless is that of security. Because of the nature of wireless, the systems do not send the information directly between devices, but rather floods a circle of up to 100 meters from the access point. This means that potentially, any person with another wireless PC in range can pick up your signals and intercept your information.

There are two principles in securing wireless systems. Firstly you need to ensure that only agreed machines (and therefore people) can attatch themselves to your access point. This is best done at a consumer level by requiring each device to authenticate to the access point (type in a password once or every time to gain access).

The second principle is that of protecting the information as it flows through the air. This is handled by encrypting the information. Without getting into too much technical detail about this, you will come across a few different types of encryption, the most common of which currently are WEP (Wireless Equivalent Protocol) and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access). There is also a WPA2 standard which provides the highest consumer encryption level. In basic terms, the stronger the encryption the better as it becomes harder to break your code and read your data.

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