A wireless network work through the uses radio waves to communicate from your home wireless router to your allowed device such as your laptop, an enabled devices or a computer with a wireless adaptor. These radio waves communicate between your laptop to your router and the modem allowing you access to your Internet. This gives you much more mobility than an wired connection.

A wireless network work through the uses radio waves to communicate from your home wireless router to your allowed device such as your laptop or enabled devices. These radio waves communicate between your laptop to your router and the modem allowing you access to your Internet provider. Allowing you much more mobility than wired connection.

It can let you to print from any location in you home with out the need of multiple printers or transferring the document to the computer that is connected to the printer as long as the printer is on the wireless network. Another thing that wireless can allow is access to music, videos, and any other multimedia. With a WLAN setup you can store all of your media on one hard-drive and allow other computers on the network access it. You would not have to transfer your videos to all hard-drives and can save a lot of time and money as will. The convenient ability to access to your files, document, and media on any device on your network is great.

There are a couple of problem with wireless (WLAN). One problem would be security. Since wireless routers uses radio waves that can be picked upped by other devices. Some computer users would even spend time to crack into wireless network for their own use or to steal private information. It would be much more difficult to do this on a wired network as the person would have to physically tap your actual cables. Of course wireless does have security features such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption that lowers the risk of being compromise, however older encryption methods can be compromised.

Range is another matter when dealing with wireless. The usual use of wireless come in different types usually, Wi-Fi 802.11b and 802.11g for a typical wireless router antenna. There range are around 120ft indoors. There is another type, 802.11n that has about double the range. Wired limitation is the length of the cable. Now there are a few things that can interfere with the range, generally devices operating at the same frequency as the router. Most routers frequency is at 2.4 which is similar to microwave ovens, security cameras, and cordless phones can interfere with the range and the signals of the router.

Range is another matter when dealing with wireless. Wireless come in different types usually, Wi-Fi 802.11b and 802.11g for a typical wireless router antenna. There range are around 120ft indoors. There is another type, 802.11n that has about double the range. Wired main limitation is the length of the cable. Now there are a few things that can interfere with the range, generally devices operating at the same frequency as the router. Most routers frequency is at 2.4GH which is similar to microwave ovens, security cameras, and cordless phones can interfere with the range and the signals of the router.

If you thought of switching from wired to wireless, it is up to you to weight in both sides. Of course many routers are operational in wired local area network (LAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) or a both LAN and WLAN at the same time. So why not have the best of both. Use wire for your main use and wireless for basic use.

Security is something most people should think about when they ever decide to install a wireless router. It does not matter if you have DSL, cable or any other provider as long as you are on wireless you will be less security than you would be wired. It does not have to be something that you should be worried about. Of course wireless is not completely vulnerable.

Nowadays, security comes built-in in most wireless routers. However, you may need to configure for the basic security for wireless and that is to have a closed Wi-fi rather than open. This itself would make it so that only an authorized person would be allowed on your network. Generally, when you first setup your router, you would have gone through the process. If you have your instruction manual it can help you a bit on setting the security up or changing it. If you can get on to the router configuration then you are one step closer to setting a secure wireless connection.

When you are able to get on to the router configuration page there is something you can do its works with the Media Access Control or MAC. It is a level of security that you can setup that you can add for security. On you computers’ controller panel under network you can find your wireless cards’ MAC address. When you find it you should go back to your routers’ configuration page where you would find a place where you can enter the MAC address. This would help keep unwanted users of you wireless network.

Another thing that can be done to further improve your wireless security is to apply encryption on to your network. The standard encryption is WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) which you must also setup a WEP key pass phrase, basically a password. The WEP key can be made up of characters comprising of numeric numbers 0-9 and the letters from A-F 10 characters long. When you save the settings on the router it would generally ask you to restate it.

Back on to the router configuration page there should be something labeled SSID (Service Set Identifier). This is to identify a wireless routers’ individual network, or your WLAN. It can be be 32 characters long combining letters or numbers. To prevent anyone in finding your wireless network you should disable the SSID. This would make your network invisible. If you do this you must now reconfigure any other computers or wireless devices to the routers new name, and password if you enabled it as well.

These are a lot of steps and may seem a lot to do and it maybe but for security it may be enough. There are other forms of setting up more security, most of with would require additional hardware so if you want that extra security you should.