David Hillman wrote:
> My WAP has a range in the low hundreds of feet. At any given time,
> there are maybe a dozen people within that, who could be hacking into my
> network. And I know them all, except for that shady-looking guy parked in
> front of my house, personally. Even without any passwords ( not that I
> run it that way ) that'd be safer than the billion people attached to the
> other end, some thousands of whom are known to be malicious hackers.
That's not a fair comparison though...
A lot more services are exposed inside your network than outside.
If you are using the network to share files, then you are essentially
offering the files to anyone who cares to snoop around. (and people do,
watch your logs for a while... I live in a typical suburb with decent
sized lots and I get connection attempts)
Saying "yes there are hackers all over the internet" is true, but
they are on the outside of your firewall. Anyone who can pick up your
wireless signal is on the inside, and has access to your files, can see
what you are surfing, etc.
> This is probably the only reason to run wires now, unless you do need
> large bandwidth between your local machines. Obviously, YMMV.
If you have an open-wall opportunity to run wires, I emphatically say
"take it". If not, then wait for a time when you need it, and wireless
is fine for just surfing and internet.
You might need it sooner than you think though. Like others in this
thread, I also transfer a lot of files from my PVR. (generally to my
laptop so I can bring it to my cottage, or watch it upstairs)
It takes about 10 minutes to move a TV show to my laptop over wired.
Over wireless, it would take hours.
If you aren't already using a PVR, but are the computer type, the
question is not *IF* you will someday buy when, it's simply when. And
when you do, moving the big files around is really only feasible over
wired networks.
--
Trevor Boicey, P. Eng.
Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@brit.ca
ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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