Part 1: Making Connections by Cutting the Cables

Chapter List

Chapter 1: Wi-Fi-What, Why, Where, Who, and How?

Chapter 2: Networking, Ethernet-Style

Chapter 4: Designing Your Wi-Fi Network

Chapter 5: Wi-Fi Communities

Part Overview

So you think people driving while jawing on cellphones is a hazard? Get ready for this: The dawn of the era of the drive-by computer hacker. It used to be that weird-looking people sitting in cars with nothing obvious to do were suspected of drug dealing, or perhaps child abduction. No more. These days, a guy in a parking lot hammering on a laptop could be cracking a network. On the other hand (especially if there's a Starbucks in his line of sight), he could just be shopping for mission-style furniture-or German licorice- over the Internet.

On the other other hand, what if he's using your network to do it? He could be, you know, if he turns out to be a drive-by Wi-Fi guy riding high on the microwaves right through the walls into your office, and right back out again on your Internet connection. He don't need no steenking wires! He's got yours!

How is this possible? Using the Internet was always about getting wired, wasn't it?

It was. But that was so yesterday. Today we have an entirely new technology, that of wireless networking, that didn't exist even ten years ago, and wasn't affordable until 1999. This book is about the dominant species of wireless networking, Wireless Fidelity, or Wi-Fi. You can connect all the computers in your house and share an Internet connection among them all, without using any wires. No bashing holes in walls or yanking network cables through the attic while dodging black widow spiders. It's as easy as it is cool, and it's very cool.

The flipside, of course, is that if you do it wrong, the whole neighborhood can connect to your computers too-including that greasy-looking guy parked down at the corner hammering on a laptop. Not to sweat-there are ways to keep out the drive-bys. You just have to read this book and follow the instructions.

Do I have your interest? If so, then begin here. Chapter 1 is about getting your bearings: What it's about, how it works, and what all the funny words mean. Wi-Fi is a type of networking, so you really need to understand something about networking, and especially the Internet style of networking. I'll be covering this in Chapters 2 and 3. If you want your own Wi-Fi network, you need to think a little bit about what your situation is (Big home? Small home? Small office?) and what sort of network will work best for you. We'll do that in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 is a survey of how wireless networking has created both intentional and unintentional communities, at a scale running from the length of your dining room table to the width of metropolitan Brisbane, Australia. Chapter 5 is less about where Wi-Fi is than about where it's going, and if you ever want to go there yourself, it would be best to have a little advance warning.

In short, the first five chapters of this book exist to get you from blissful ignorance to a state of modest cluefulness. After that it starts getting technical-but by then you'll be hooked. Trust me.