Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Basically, what we’re saying here is that the radio waves sent by your wireless
LAN gear will leave your house, and there’s not a darned thing you can
do about it. Nothing. What you can do, however, is make it difficult for other
people to tune into those radio signals, thus (and more importantly) making
it difficult for those who can tune into them to decode them and use them to
get onto your network (without your authorization) or to scrutinize your
e-mail, Web surfing habits, and so on.
You can take several steps to make your wireless network more secure and to
provide some airlink security on your network. We talk about these topics in
the following sections, where we discuss both easy and more complex methods
of securing your network.
Getting into Encryption
and Authentication
Chapter 9: Securing Your Wireless Home Network
Two primary (and related) security functions enable you to secure your network:
encryption and authentication.
� Encryption: Uses a cryptographic cipher to scramble your data before
transmitting it across the network. Only users with the appropriate key
can unscramble (or decipher) this data.
� Authentication: Simply the act of verifying that a person connecting to
your wireless LAN is indeed someone you want to have on your network.
With authentication in place, only authorized users can connect with your
APs and gain access to your network and to your Internet connection.
The vast majority of wireless LAN gear (access
points and network cards, for example) is
shipped to customers with all the security features
turned off. That’s right: zip, nada, zilch, no
security. A wide-open access point sits there
waiting for anybody who passes by (with a Wi-
Fi equipped computer, at least) to associate with
the access point and get on your network.
This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; initially configuring
your network with security features
turned off and then enabling the security features
after things are up and running is easier
No security!
than doing it the other way ’round. Unfortunately,
many people never take that extra step and activate
their security settings. So a huge number of
access points out there are completely open to
the public (when they’re within range, at least).
We should add that some people purposely
leave their access point security turned off to
provide free access to their neighborhoods. (We
talk about this topic in Chapter 16.) But we find
that many people don’t intend to do so.
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