Wireless Networks Hacks & Mods

Introduction

Welcome to Wireless Network Hacks & Mods For Dummies. This book was written to help you get the most out of your wireless network. Whether you’ve got one access point that you’d like to do more with, or a whole house full of wireless gear, you can do a lot to boost your performance and extend the core wireless functionality. Whatever your situation, we’re here to help you supercharge your wireless network.

Wireless Network Hacks & Mods For Dummies is not an electronics mod or software hacker’s guide to wireless gear. As intricate as these devices have gotten these days, if you think you know how to retool a motherboard for performance, you don’t need us to tell you what to do. Second, more and more off-the-shelf software can now help you accomplish what used to require backdoor hacking.

Our focus is on helping you use the current equipment on the market, with the current software tools and design techniques, to put together the most comprehensive and high-performance home wireless network you can possi­bly get. You’re not going to pry open your wireless access point and start sol­dering high-performance chips onto its motherboard (at least not under our guidance).

Wireless Network Hacks & Mods For Dummies picks up where our more beginner-level book, Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, published by Wiley, left off. If you have not installed a network yet, you might consider buying both books so that you can cover the more basic installation issues at the same time you read about how to broaden and optimize that network’s performance after it is installed.

About This Book

If you’ve installed some level of wireless capability in your home and want to take it to the next level, or are thinking of purchasing a wireless computer network and want a high-powered setup from the get-go, this is the book for you. Here’s the bottom line: If you want to (or have) cut the cord, we want to help you improve your network.

If you have a wireless network, you have probably realized that performance can vary wildly around your home. What’s more, you might be trying to add additional gear onto your network, only to find it does not seem to solve the problems you set out to fix. You’re not alone — many of those who have mas­tered the first stage of getting a wireless network up and running have won­dered how they can simply get more out of it. Towards that end, this book helps you get the most out of your network over the long term.

With this book in hand, you’ll have all the information that you need to know about the following topics:

*.Planning a wireless network that can cover your whole home, including in your car and outside the walls of the house

*. Evaluating and selecting advanced wireless networking equipment for installation in your home

*.Installing and configuring multiple wireless networking devices that work together seamlessly

*. Understanding the issues surrounding boosting your wireless signals to increase the range and throughput of your network

*. Securing your wireless network from nosy neighbors and hackers

*.Playing computer games over a high-performance wireless network and across the Internet

*.Connecting your audio-visual gear to your wireless network and sharing MP3, video files, DVDs, and more around the whole house

*.Talking with people worldwide, for free, over your wireless network

*.Protecting your home with wireless surveillance

*.Using your wireless gear on the road

*.Setting up your own hot spot to share wireless access with others

*. Outfitting your car with a wireless network

*. Discovering devices that you’ll be able to connect to your wireless home network in the future

System Requirements

There are no minimum requirements from a wireless equipment or computer perspective for this book. Just about any computer will work over a wireless connection, as long as it has some sort of networking capability (which covers most of the computers still working today).

If your home network is anything like ours, you want to end up with a wire­less network that connects old and new computers and devices, newer and older operating systems, Windows and Mac-affiliated devices, and a whole lot more. Wireless Network Hacks & Mods For Dummies will help you get there.

That having been said, the newest versions of Windows and Mac OS do the best job of helping you quickly and painlessly optimize your wireless net­work. Much of the sophistication in wireless networking has occurred rela­tively recently. Most of the advanced wireless gear and software, as well as most of the newer wireless audio/visual, gaming, and similar gear, have been designed around the latest operating systems and hardware interface capa­bilities. So if your computer does not have USB ports, Windows Wireless Networking, or other similarly “modern” computer conveniences, you’re likely to be at a huge disadvantage in trying to adopt at least some of the ideas and recommendations in this book.

As a result, we mostly cover optimizing wireless networks that connect PCs running the Windows operating system (Windows 95 or later) or the Mac OS (Mac OS 9 or later) — with a particular focus on Windows XP and Mac OS X. Although wireless networking is also popular among Linux users, Linux-specific instructions are not provided in this book.
How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized into several chapters that are grouped into five parts. The chapters are presented in a logical order — flowing from an intense tuto­rial on wireless technologies, to installing, optimizing, and using your wire­less home network — but feel free to use the book as a reference and read the chapters in any order that you want.

Part I: Making Your World Wireless

The first part of the book is an in-depth primer on networking and on wireless networking. If you are not overly familiar with the concepts of networking a computer, this part of the book provides a quick foundation on wireless gear, standards, and concepts, so that you can appreciate the advice provided in the rest of the book. Chapter 1 presents a total view of all the devices we intend to help you wirelessly network; Chapter 2 discusses the state of standards and important technology trends that affect the operation, optimization, and future-proofing of your network; Chapter 3 provides an overview of the key elements of a home wireless network; and Chapter 4 introduces you to the key broad­band Internet access technologies that your wireless home network uses to connect outside your home and gives you the information you need to connect the two networks (wireless and Internet access) together.

Part II: Boosting Performance on Your Wireless Network

The second part of the book helps you plan your extended and expanded wire­less home network. It helps you understand how to create a whole home wireless footprint; how to link your wireless network with other wired tech­nologies in your home; how to track and maintain the operation of your entire home network; how to optimize your network’s overall performance; and how to secure your wireless network. This is the part to turn to if you want to learn how to measure the performance of your wireless network and what to do to improve that performance.

Part III: Wireless on the Go

Part III discusses how to use your wireless network on the road. It helps you understand how you can access the Internet from remote wireless access sites called hot spots in coffee shops, hotels, airports, and other public loca­tions. We tell you how to keep your communications safe from eavesdroppers while on the road, and even how to put wireless connectivity in your car. The last chapter in this part covers how to set up your own wireless hot spot, so you can help others communicate wirelessly on the road too.

Part IV: Cool Wireless Toys

After you get your wireless home network running in perfect shape, now comes the fun. Part IV of the book presents many cool things that you can do over a wireless network, including playing multi-user computer games, connecting your audio-visual equipment, viewing rooms via wireless surveillance (even over the Internet!), and talking over your wireless network to anyone in the world. What’s the fun of a high-powered wireless network without cool toys?

Part V: The Part of Tens

Part V provides a couple of top-ten lists that we think you’ll find interesting — ten great online sources for specific areas of high-performance networking and the ten most frequently-asked security questions about Wi-Fi security (a topic that puzzles even the most experienced users sometimes).
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