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March 26, 2004
Wi-Fi: Strength Through Security
After fiddling with my Netgear wireless router for the better part of the last week, I concluded that the router was unable to let my wireless Mac laptop access the Internet through an encrypted connection.
Okay, lemme back up for a minute for those of you who aren't part of the wi-fi universe yet (don't worry, neither was I until 10 days ago). Wi-Fi, or Wireless Fidelity, is the common name for a technology that allows you to connect to the Internet wirelessly. (Picture walking around your house with your laptop or palm pilot and having Internet access without being plugged into anything -- that's what it's all about.) It's been around the for the last decade or so -- I remember seeing presentations by wi-fi pioneer/Colorado cowboy Dave Hughes back around 1995 and 1996 -- but it's only caught on as a mainstream consumer technology in the last few years. For 50 to 100 bucks, you can go out and buy a little box with an antenna on it, then connect it to your DSL or cable modem to set up a wireless network in your home or office.
The downside, though, is that being wireless means that you're opening yourself up to others accessing your Internet connection -- and potentially your computer and everything you send over the Internet. Sometimes this type of open access can be a very good thing -- the cafe below my old apartment in DC, for example, offered customers free wireless access, while others set up public networks so anyone can show up at the local park and go online for free. But for the typical home wi-fi user, beaming your wireless signal into the neighborhood isn't a good thing, because neighbors or anyone going out war driving (cruising neighborhoods with a wi-fi computer in search of networks to explore or hack) could access your connection and computer.
So, the powers that be created a variety of ways to secure your wireless connection using special types of encryption. With encryption, anyone who tries to access your network will need to crack a 10-digit password to get inside. Sure, it's possible, but for the casual neighborhood slacker, it's usually adequate.
My problem: because I own a Mac, I was unable to set up my Netgear wireless router to use encryption to protect my network. I spent several occasions on the phone with Netgear's nice tech support people in India, and they pretty much came to the same conclusion -- the router will work on my Mac only if I don't use encryption.
Fortunately, the folks behind the Best Buy empire were prescient enough to offer their customers a 30-day, no-questions-asked return policy. So I packed up the Netgear router with all of its accoutrements (warranty info, CD-ROM, incomprehensible startup manual, twist ties, the works), and walked back to the Landmark Center to the local Best Buy. I swapped the Netgear router for a D-Link router, which according to online hearsay was a bit more Mac-friendly than Netgear.
Back at the apartment, the basic set-up went by easily -- desktop Mac connected, laptop connected. Then I tried to set up the encryption; once again my laptop got cut off. So I called their tech support (someone with a southern US accent rather than a southern Indian one) and went step-by-step through the process a couple times over. No dice. The tech support guy put the phone down to read the Mac manual (oh, the price I pay for loyalty) while I fiddled around on my Mac.
After 30 minutes of this, I managed to get the encryption to work and connect the laptop wirelessly. "Okay, I got it working," I said. "Thanks for your help...."
"Woah, wait a second," he replied. "Tell me exactly how you did it so I don't have to go through this again." (I couldn't tell if he was curious, annoyed or both; probably both.)
I spent another five minutes trying to recreate what I'd just done -- I wasn't totally sure myself. But it ended up as being as simple as letting the Mac guide me through the configurations process rather than having me do it all manually. It was just a matter of selecting the "assist me" option, and the Mac asked me all the right questions, setting up the laptop for flawless, encrypted wireless Internet access.
So now it's approaching 6pm, and I'm sitting in my living room in our black lounge chair, listening to Georges Brassens sing "Je M'Suis Fait Tout Petit" while our orange tabby stretches out on our liquor cabinet. Look ma, no wires.
Stay tuned for my next trick -- this weekend I'll try to figure out a way to get my nine-year-old, totally obsolete Mac powerbook 1400cs onto my wi-fi network....
Posted by acarvin at March 26, 2004 5:49 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
