Chapter 12 - Secure Wireless Networks for the Home and Small Business

Chapter 12

Secure Wireless Networks for the Home and Small Business

Using wireless networking in homes and small businesses has obvious benefits. With wireless networking, you do not have to install cabling to connect the separate computers together; and portable computers, such as laptops and notebook computers, can be moved around the house or small business office and maintain their connections to the network.

You can deploy IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN networks in your home or small business by using either infrastructure mode (a wireless access point [AP] is required) or ad hoc mode (a wireless AP is not required).

In infrastructure mode in a typical home or small business office, a single wireless AP is used to connect one or more computers that are either mobile (such as laptop or notebook computers) or stationary (such as a desktop computer in a room without network cabling) to each other, and to either an existing wired network (such as Ethernet) or the Internet.

Figure 12-1 shows an example of a single wireless AP wireless network in a home environment.

Figure 12-1. An example of a single wireless AP wireless network in a home.

In ad hoc mode, the wireless clients can connect directly together without needing a wireless AP or a connection to an existing wired network. Figure 12-2 shows an example of an ad hoc mode wireless network in a home environment.

Figure 12-2. An example of an ad hoc mode wireless network in a home.