As I was sitting at home watching a little TV this afternoon I see this commercial come on. Once again another Verizon Wireless Dead Zone commercial. Verizon has been beating this horse since 2008 and in my mind it doesn't look like it will be attracting any new customers. In this day and age the communications industry needs to be rapidly releasing new advancements in their service.
For cellular companies I think Sprint finally got the idea on their advertisements. Good job Sprint on realizing the future, rather than playing reruns of your bragging rights.
With all of the wireless traffic in our neighboring airways these days it can be difficult to get the same quality of signal you were previously receiving. Most average users are unaware that their wireless devices utilize frequency channels, some of which can be adjusted to use a different channel. However, when multiple devices are using the same channel you may experience some wireless interference. For those of you who may be a little lost by this, think about those times when you have gotten a ghost image of a TV channel into another channel. This is similar to the interference going on with your wireless devices.
There are a few different software programs which you can utilize to help identify which channel you should change your device settings to (when applicable), but I am only going to plug one here today.
"NetStumbler used to be our tool of choice for profiling a wireless network, but NetStumbler has stumbled. Today we favor inSSIDer." -InfoWorld
*NetStumbler is another good program to help out with this, but just ignore that because it is not being plugged :)
inSSIDer's graphical system makes it a great application for identifying wireless interference. The graphs allow you to understand not only how strong a wireless signal is and what channel it is on, but how much interference it causes across the neighboring channels due to frequency bleeding.
I urge you to download this application and try it out for yourself, the results you get after changing to a better channel situated for your area will give you the satisfaction you deserve.
With these times of Wi-Fi security is often overlooked by the average user. Unfortunately most users find security in the use of wireless activity through the obscurity of their knowledge.
If you utilize wireless devices I encourage you to research further about the security or lack there-of that you are using. This post discusses a few points of wireless security that you may or may not already be aware of.
Unsecured wireless networks (i.e. Unencrypted Home routers, coffee shops, universities...) These networks, while convenient to use these networks, it is just the same for others to obtain information about you and your wireless devices. For the majority of these networks any user can monitor the web traffic and information sent, including usernames and passwords. If you choose to utilize these networks I would advise to be cautious as to which sites you are accessing, only because of the information you may be releasing. On a side note, it is a good idea to vary your passwords from site to site, which will help to avoid having your password to a site such as MySpace discovered, and this putting risk on the security your personal information via your bank website account.
WEP Encryption Don't use this form of encryption if possible with your wireless router. This is said in such a manner that it may cause you to be a higher risk of wireless attacks than that of an unencrypted network. WEP keys can be identified in a matter of minutes and finding these keys and attacking the host users, whether playful or malicious, may be seen as a game to the attackers. Most routers have had updates release from their manufacturers that would allow them to at a minimum upgrade to a WPA protection, which holds a lot more security.
Share on Facebook
Tweet Me
