Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Life without wires!

Last Friday I got to setup wireless router (LinkSys Router supporting wi-fi 802.11g protocol providing speeds at 54 Mbps) at our office. That was the first hand experience with Wi-Fi network. IR and BlueTooth also fall in this wireless category but are limited in distance and one has to hold the devices really close to make use of these wireless networks. Wi-Fi is so different and yet powerful. I was so excited even with the idea of setting up the wireless connection as that meant just roaming around with the laptop anywhere and still not be bothered about the cables. I never imagined that setting up a wireless network would be that easy and quick. It just took about 6 minutes to setup the network. Once the wireless router was setup, I couldnt wait to start using it. Just switched on the laptop and enabled the wireless network and BINGO! It worked! I carried my laptop and check it by trying the network range in all the rooms around like how I reacted when I first saw a cordless phone. I spent about a good 1 hr with it before I got reminded to attend to other important things.

I went home in the night and just couldnt get out of the wireless network excitement. I have a 900 Home plus BSNL connection which gives 256 kbps without any restriction on the downloads. With 2 Laptops at home, I had to put a switch, use 3 LAN cables and use one Laptop as Gateway to share the Internet Connection between these laptops. The Laptops are setup on a table and the entire room gives a person first hand view of a network room with wires hanging out everywhere. Wires dont usually like being touched and a slight touch would send the internet connection for a toss and it would take whole 3 minutes to setup the same. It would be a daunting task then to connect to my office computer and log into it and start using it. I was finding many more reasons to setup a wireless network at home.

I was explaining about wireless connectivity to my brothers when I happenned to enable the wireless network for one of the laptops. To my surprise, I saw that there are already 2 networks within the reach of the laptop. I realized quickly that one of them was not secured and immediately I tried to connect to it. It worked! For a moment I felt the happiness of a hacker breaking into a system. Had there been a shop at 12 midnight, I was sure that I would have bought the wireless router then and spent the night enjoying the wireless connectivity.

I only had to postpone it by a day. I got NetGear wireless router the next day and got it configured. Life is so different without any wires. I now roam around the house with laptop with me. I go to hall, kitchen, balcony, bedroom or even move out of house and still be able to access the connectivity. Wowww! I had spent about 3 hrs checking the connectivity and enjoying it. I checked the entire house and was elated not to find even a single Wi-Fi deadspot.
No wires, no frequent disconnections, no dependencies on other machines, nothing. How did I do all these days without Wi-Fi? Sounds hard to imagine now.

After 3 days, I am now thinking about complete wireless solutions, be it the wireless speakers, wireless headsets or wirless battery chargings. Life would be so different then. Wow! I love technology.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pavan,

Wireless is really cool! I understand your excitement - I felt the same when I did the setup last year in US. Make it Secured and enjoy!

Pavan Pochu said...

Yes Satheesh. I did make it secure. I put 2 layers of security. First one is MAC Address bind and if the user gets past that a password is asked.

Anshuman said...

Not a good idea to be revealing publicly that you have been naughty while stalking into someones network! But definitely a good warning to those who do not know how to secure their wireless network - in short they should stay away from setting it up for themselves.

One of these days I might start demanding wireless myself. :)

Anshuman

Pavan Pochu said...

Call me when you want to setup wireless.

Anonymous said...

Poch! unfortunately wireless music equipment had been terrible in my tests. Even Bose suggests not using wireless headphones as they may not give you true music experience. If you know who I am then you know how much important it is to me to have that true music experience!!!

Pavan Pochu said...

Thanks for the comments Abhilash :-) Does that answer your question if I know who you are?