Going Wireless (longish, sorry)

[quest]

I searched for this, but didn't find anything. If there is a thread about this, please point me in the right direction.

We recently got a new computer, a desktop. Our last one was a laptop, but it was pretty old (in computer years) and it was time. I thought I would miss the laptop, but since it was tied to the modem (and going wireless then was a joke because the model was just too old for it to be easy to do), it acted as a desktop anyway. And I just heart my new desktop.

So now DH received a laptop through work, and needs to be able to connect online at home to check the status of things when he's not there. Every time he tried, though, it would mess up the desktop's internet connection, plus he couldn't connect. (Don't ask, it doesn't make any logical sense.)

What they told him at work was that he needed to access the internet from his laptop using wireless...he couldn't hardwire in. (Don't ask again, I don't get it, they said it was something about security.)

So their tech came out to set up the wireless router...his laptop already had the card installed. My main question for the tech was if this meant that now my desktop was also going to be using wireless. I work in web development so I should be more familar with the tech aspects of this, but I'm not, and to be honest, I'm not ready to go wireless for me, personally. I don't like the iffiness of the security.

Well, of course, despite leaving the questions with my DH (I wasn't there when the tech came), they didn't get answered. My DH is NOT tech-savvy at all, which is part of the reason why this whole thing pisses me off so much...he will just believe what they tell him. Supposedly the tech found 'a bunch of people' in our neighborhood who are wireless and not protected...that's supposed to make me feel better? Hardly.

My gut tells me this was just a stupid thing to do, but maybe I'm being paranoid. And I'm so peeved at DH for thinking he HAS to do this...it doesn't make sense that we have to change our whole home system for work..shouldn't they find a way for it to work with what we've got? We have a normal internet connection (cable), why isn't that good enough?

So my question (after all that) is....are you wireless? How do you feel about it? Do you use it only for laptops or is your whole house wireless, including desktops? What level of security do you have in place? Do you worry about someone breaching it? Am I overreacting? Any insight you have is great appreciated. Thanks!

[bookworm]

You can get a router that will allow both wireless and wired connections; hook it into your modem and (if it makes you feel more comfortable) run the cable to your machine and let your husband use it wirelessly. I would still encrypt the router; there should be instructions in the box for setting up WEP (I think that's wireless encryption protocal, but I can't remember) or whatever the encryption level is these days (it might have changed since I last set one up).

Good security practices include choosing a password not found in the dictionary; using a mix of lowercase and capital letters, and including numbers; and changing the password frequently.

You can find a wireless router at Best Buy or someplace like that. I've used Linksys and found them fairly easy to configure.

[tlew12778]

We are wireless. In fact, when our router burned out a couple weeks ago, we went to the store the same day to buy another.

We only have 2 laptops. Both are wireless but both can be connected to the cable as well.

I had a password on the account but we had to reset the modem and in doing so, it reset the PW to nothing. I should reset the PW but am lazy. We are not really worried about ppl tapping in bc all our neighbors are ancient and don't have PCs. The few young ppl in our building also have wifi bc I can detect their networks.

The main problem, in the US especially, is if ppl start downloading illegal stuff using your IP address. This is the main reason you will want to password protect yourself. They don't actually try those cases here (invasion of privacy laws) so no one really worries too much. I, personally, am more worried with potential jumpers eating up my bandwidth.

Re: your DH's work access, he might be using a wireless security card that looks like a credit card but has digital numbers that change every few minutes. You don't need to be wireless to use one of those. My guess is the problem with the 2 PCs is probably the MAC address which some ISPs require you to set before giving you your access. Basically you have to communicate the MAC address to the ISP but each PC has a different one (I think... I just learned this last week when setting up my new wifi modem). So when you swap back and forth, it changes the MAC addresses and only one PC will have access to the net.

I don't really understand why you want your desktop to be wireless. It doesn't make much logical sense to me unless you just want one less wire coming out of the back of the CPU. I am not even sure a desktop has a wireless antenna in it.

[Aimee]

The laptops run on wireless, the desktop is connected to the router via Cat5, meaning it's not wireless.

We've got our network secured using WEP encryption, which means that there's a very long network key that must be entered before anyone can use our wireless and get on our network. We've also got the router set so that only the MAC addresses of certain computers can connect to the wireless.

If your neighbors are too lazy/stupid to secure their wireless, that has nothing to do with the overall security of the protocol. Their network may not be secure, but it doesn't mean yours can't.

[PookiePrincess]

We have two laptops and two desktops. They are all wireless except for DH's desktop. Honestly, I don't know all that much about our network and the protection we have for it, but I do know we have a firewall installed. I leave all that up to DH...he's the technology person. It really doesn't bother me that most of our computers are wireless. If there was a reason to worry about being wireless, we wouldn't have most of our computers set up that way.

[jenjunum]

Our desktops and laptops are wireless and we just got a printer with a network card so that's going on the network too. I find wireless easier to deal with. I'm not sure how your old system was set up but before we went wireless our (wired) router was near our cable box (since we also have cable internet). Then we ran a long ethernet cable to our computer. I HATED this. It was mostly hidden but I still hated it.

After we went wireless we bought a wireless USB converter doo-dad. Basically just a little antenea that plugs into a USB port to make our desktop wireless. It was a pretty simple switch. We've been having some problems with the desktop going offline but we're not sure if it's the network, the USB antenea, or our router. We're thinking it's the network since our provider just got bought out by Time Warner and our service in general has been pretty crappy.

I'm not worried about security. As long your network is secured (as others have mentioned) it would be very difficult for someone to hack in. Many, many people out there have unsecured networks (because they didn't set it up correctly) so any potential hacker could easily get a network connection elsewhere- it's easy to find one and simple to connect.

There should be a little wireless icon in the tray of your husband's laptop where you can view the wireless networks in your area. You should be able to see yours and it will tell you if it's secured or not.

I love wireless. I would not go back. As long as I have a laptop I will always have a wirelss connection.

[johnny'sgirl]

Bit of background--hubby, roommate, and I are all techies, and hubby is totally paranoid about network security.

We're all wireless (2 laptops and 2 desktops for 3 adults living in our house) and honestly, none of us worry. We have a router and two firewalls and hubby has everything encrypted and locked down 8 ways to Sunday, so it's really not a concern at all.

That, and we live in Bumfark, CA and there are several unsecured WiFi connections around us, so I doubt anyone would try to access our stuff. It's totally not an issue for us.

I think you need to get a router, password protect your connection, get Norton Internet Security (or something similar) and then quit worrying so much.

[quest]

Thanks, everyone. I think my main concern is that I'm not sure about the specifics of setting up the security correctly, and I know DH isn't, so we're relying on someone else, and that makes me nervous. I will check DH's laptop to see if it shows ours as secure, and that will help calm me a little.

Supposedly the tech showed DH how to put WEP security in place (we have to purchase it) so he'll do that (and hopefully it really is easier to do than I think).

I do have Norton Security on my desktop, so that's good.

I'm slowly getting over being so po'd about this. But I'm very PG, have to get through the holidays, and I guess this was just something I didn't want to have to deal with right now .

Thanks for all the info...it helped!!

[bookworm]

I'm glad it helped! Just a note about purchasing WEP--any wireless router you buy should have a WEP option right out of the box. Some people don't set it (I really don't understand why--I promise it's not hard!), which can lead to the problem of stealing bandwidth or potentially doing Bad Things over your connection.

You get the router, connect it to the modem and PC, pop in the installation CD, and along the way of clicking "next" it should give you an option to "enable WEP."

Having said that, maybe there is something with your husband's setup that makes this more complicated--I don't mean to dismiss that. But otherwise, securing your wireless network is really not that scary.

[quest]

Okay, sorry, you're right. DH says we already have 128-bit WEP in place. That's what the tech guy set up. So that's good. I wanted to go one step higher, to WPA. (I act like I know what I'm talking about .) And even though it is something I'd like to do, I'm getting the feeling maybe it's not as urgent of a need as I originally thought. Just something to add to the to-do list!

Thanks again for the info and for calming me down!