Wifi and Wireless Networks
There are few things we use more in the home than the wireless network. But have you secured the network well enough, and do you really know what it means to have a 5 ghz network? Wifi is the technology that enables you to get a wireless network in your home, workplace and other public places. Apart from mobile broadband and internet via satellite, it is common for internet signals to be carried through cables. In the early days of the home pc, the only way to get internet was to have a cable that carried internet signals straight into the pc.
Today, fortunately, cables are not necessary to be connected to the internet, and we can thank wifi technology for that. Wifi receives the internet signals from cable and spreads these out in a wireless network, which means that several devices can be connected to the internet at the same time. The speed of the internet from the provider determines what the different devices can do at the same time – in particular, streaming video content requires a lot of network capacity per device.
Scholars argue about whether wifi is an abbreviation or not. While some believe that wifi stands for wireless fidelity, others have claimed that wifi simply does not stand for anything, but was only intended as a pun on hifi from the music world.
Regardless of what the name should stand for or not, wifi is a wireless network technology based on radio waves, which makes it possible to transfer data wirelessly. Although we associate wifi primarily with the internet, it is actually about almost the opposite, namely setting up a network that has nothing to do with the world outside, but only locally in your home. On this network, a number of devices can talk to each other, which will only become more and more common in the future where light bulbs, refrigerators, speakers, tvs, mobile phones and the like will be able to connect to the wireless network.
Security and wifi
When more and more can be connected to the network, high demands are also placed on security. The wireless network is a vulnerable infrastructure where a great deal of intimate information literally flows between walls. You pay bills, check your taxes, keep in touch with your doctor, store photos of your family and much, much more on your network at home. It is then incredibly important that the network is secured against unauthorized access.
It is important that you have a password on the network. On this point, the vast majority have improved a lot, helped by the fact that it is mostly standard on all routers that it comes with a password. If you set up the password yourself, it is important that it is a password that will take a long time to guess. There are a number of services that generate and store passwords securely, such as lastpass.
