...it's time to go wireless - networking two PCs, one laptop and two printers, none of them ultimately in wireable reach of my broadband connection.

As always with computers, everything I read either makes it sounds suspiciously easy, or is so deep in acronyms and IEEE numbers and scarinesses - yes, I know the difference between WEP and WPA encryption - that it's very, very hard to sort out what I need to know and what I don't. And I fear that it'll all cost twice as much, and take eight times as long as I expected, and end up with some small annoyingnesses that I never manage to solve.

So any words of wisdom or awful warnings WWers have to pass on would be gratefully received!

Emma

I've consulted my RITE, and he says you need a router, which is a separate box that routes signals to ‘wireless cards’ which you plug in to your PCs, laptop, and printers – so you need to be sure they all have card slots, otherwise it won't work. He said there’ll be instructions with the router but it would be a good idea to go to a PC shop and tell them what you want to do. They’ll advise you what’s the best solution.

If all else fails, there are people who do house-calls to set up new PCs. They’d do it for you.

Dee

You could do worse than a BT Home Hub. It's free with BT Broadband and I've had no problem at all connecting up the PC's and laptops in the house to it. I haven't tried connecting up the printer though - mine sitis next to the PC so that's not a problem for me.

The hub just sits where the broadband connection is and my PC already has wireless. My son has a PC which I put a wireless card into and my daughter has a mac ibook and you just buy a wireless key fob type thingy to put in the side. The CD that comes with the hub does most of the work and has a "wireless network key" - a string of numbers and letters on the back - and you just type them into the other hardware and off it goes. Also if you have problems with it they will try to fix it for you. There is a helpline number which is based in India where they have no idea what you're talking about and are a complete nightmare but if you make enough of a fuss they give you an 0800 number in the UK where they will bend over backwards to help. Just tell them you're a writer!!!

It has been far less trouble than the old router I had and much simpler to operate - looks pretty cool too.

My experience of wireless networking has been very positive, it has been a godsend.

I bought a Netgear router which works brilliantly and was very easy to set up.

Mind you, I have a Mac, which makes everything easier than using Windows. I've been working in and around the IT industry for nearly 20 years, on all kinds of weird systems, and my advice to everyone is buy a Mac. Suddenly all the frustrations and annoyances which most computer users think of as "normal" just disappear. I will have more to say on this in the "anti-spam" thread elsewhere on WW.

Some tips I've discovered about wireless networking:

1 - Make sure your router's aerial is always pointing vertically up. This makes a difference to signal strength. Also, it is cheap to pimp your router by buying a much bigger aerial for it, which can help.

2 - It's not difficult to share printers across wireless networking. On a Mac, you just switch on "Printer Sharing" for the given printer, and then all the other PCs/Macs on the same network can print to it. (I just Googled and it's the same on Windows, there is a tickbox somewhere in Control Panel|Printer s called "Share This Printer").

3 - It's easy to go mad and make your wireless network so secure that you can't actually access it yourself. If you can't get your wireless network to connect, switch off some of the clever encryption options. Then, after you have got things working, look into switching encryption back on again. The worst that can happen by having an insecure wireless network is that someone could steal some of your bandwidth by connecting to the Internet via your network, thus slowing your network down. They can not get into your computer just by getting onto your wireless network. I suppose they could also print to your shared printer if they wanted to! Anyway depending where you live, this may not even be a problem. There are rooms in my house where the wireless network doesn't reach. I'm pretty certain my neighbours' houses are out of range.

4 - If you do think someone else is logging onto your system, it's easy to fix. Your router will tell you who is logged on at any one time. If someone is logged on using an IP address you don't recognise, you can terminate the connection immediately and blacklist them in future.

Of course there are megabrained supervillains out there - the kind of kids you see in the newspapers being arrested for hacking into the Pentagon - who could wreak havoc with your wireless network if they chose to. But there's not many of them around, certainly not in my village, and if there was I don't think my unfinished novels/screenplays/shopping lists would be of great interest to them.

Wireless networking is great.

I would buy Macs if I didn't have the children using PCs at school, and transferring files too and fro. I know they can translate, but at 8.30 on a school night I really don't want to be having to try.

Actually, I don't find PCs agonising, but then I'm rarely trying to do anything sophisticated. Thanks for that encouragement, Griff. It's knowing that I can't afford to be offline for any length of time while I struggle that's so daunting, but I feel braver now...

They can not get into your computer just by getting onto your wireless network.

But is this the case, assuming you're sharing files between your networked computers? If they've got onto your network, presumably they can access anything you've set to be accessible to the network. But I know encryption's pretty good these days, as long as you've remembered to switch it on.

Emma

I would buy Macs if I didn't have the children using PCs at school, and transferring files too and fro. I know they can translate, but at 8.30 on a school night I really don't want to be having to try.

Really, there's nothing to try. Assuming your children's files are just the usual Microsoft Office type, ie Word, Excel etc, there is a free version of Office for the Mac called [url=www.neooffice.org]NeoOffice[/url], so no conversion needed. Plus lots of other equally easy solutions if it turns out you don't like that one.

But is this the case, assuming you're sharing files between your networked computers? If they've got onto your network, presumably they can access anything you've set to be accessible to the network.

Yes that's true, I hadn't thought of that as I don't share files across my network. But I seem to recall when you set up shared drives on Windows you can set up the authentication requirements to say that only certain users can access the drives, or that people have to put a password in to access them. (But maybe that's even more bother than getting the encryption working on your network in the first place.)

Sorry, Eve and Dee, I meant to say earlier, thanks for that - very helpful.

Griff, I know enough Mac people to know that this thread could get like the God Delusion one, so let's not go there. There's of course also the issue of the children's games - they think it's bad enough that we don't have a playstation/x-box and all the rest of the stuff! If they could only buy what they can get for a Mac, I'd have a revolution on my hands!

No, it's the sharing and eavesdropping thing that bothers me, fundamentally: as well as file-sharing, there's the online banking and so on... But it sounds as if the latest encryption is really very good, so I'm sure it'll be fine. It's just a case of gritting my teeth and getting all the new kit from the same brand, and going very, very carefully about it all.

Emma

Hi Emma

Didn't mean to sound preachy re Macs, I'm just sharing the FANTASTIC NEWS that unlike (say) five years ago, these days it is a lot easier to switch over from Windows than people generally assume. For me, the single benefit of no viruses, adware, spyware etc makes it worth doing.

But you have put your finger on another good point with games. (I know, I sound like the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition - "APART from file sharing, AND games...") There are games for Mac, but precious few. Although Xboxes are so cheap now (about 80 quid) that perhaps moving from PC to "Mac + Xbox" is a reasonable way to go (of course, you then have to buy all your favourite games over again, otherwise how else would game companies make tons of money ?)

The online banking thing is OK though. Even if someone got onto your wireless network, they can't snoop your banking info. Regardless of the encryption status of your home network, the online transactions between you and the bank are secure: you can tell this by the web address you are browsing starting with HTTPS rather than HTTP. Any communication with a HTTPS website is secure by definition.



<Added>

Of course, if you are infected with a "keylogger" virus it can obtain all your passwords as you type them in at the keyboard, and send them back to its evil creator. If only there was a kind of computer that didn't get these viruses. Oh, wait ...

<Added>

Just realised two separate discussions are beginning to get muddled up in the above post.

File-sharing issue is about "unsecured" wireless networks, nothing to do with whether you use Mac or Windows.

Gameplaying, or the lack of it, is a definite weakness of Macs.

NB Please don't think I'm trying to say "Windows users are all idiots" etc as these discussions so often degenerate into. I mention Macs here and elsewhere because they make the specific things under discussion, like wireless networking and computer security, very easy.

No, I know the virus thing - in fact I know most of the Mac pro's, after going out with a Mac-fancier for eighteen months. And there's no monopoly for either species on stupidity: the afore-mentioned ex- was asked by a friend to set up a wireless connection for her, and he found that he could access seven other completely unsecured networks from inside her flat...

Meanwhile, I have the full Norton Internet Security constantly on and regularly updated, so I think my security's no worse than most and better than some.

Emma

I remember reading something about Apple releasing some fix that allowed you to run windows on a Mac. Best of both worlds, or worst?

The whole issue is worth avoiding, if you ask me.

As for wireless networking, I love it, even though I've only ever had one computer connected to my network. Using the encryption is probably a good idea, but you don't really get people daft enough to attach themselves to your network anymore. Not since people realised it was a two-way connection (therefore, while they could look at your PC, you could look at theirs, and even download a load of illegal material onto their PC then contact the police, etc), anyway.

What does annoy me is the recent push for wireless by the service providers, as though wireless broadband is somehow better than normal broadband, and that they're offering an improved product. The broadband is the same, it's just the router that differs, and the fact that your PC needs a reciever. And the price difference between a normal wired router and the wireless equivalent is nominal.

It reminds me of the old commercials where PC World would say with a straight face that a faster, more expensive PC would improve your internet speed. The sad thing is people believed it.

Yes, I know what you mean. The wirelessness is the only advantage of wireless. I'd prefer wired, if we hadn't somehow acquired so much kit that it would mean cables snaking all over the house. As it is I can see I'm going to end up buying a million yards of ethernet cable so I can hitch one beast up by wires, for installing it all, and then all those times when you need to work through the million and one reasons the network's gone down...

Mind you, the hot night when my daughter's nose bled and bled and the only cool place was the garden and the best way to keep her occupied and calm while she held an ice pack to her nose would have been the CBBC website, I could have done with wireless...

Emma

Not since people realised it was a two-way connection (therefore, while they could look at your PC, you could look at theirs, and even download a load of illegal material onto their PC then contact the police, etc), anyway.

This is not remotely true. Sharing a network does not mean you can access each others computers.

As far as I can gather - assuming the network isn't encrypted which of course it should be - it depends entirely on how much of a computer the user makes visible to the network. If it's just files, there isn't much problem unless you're JKR and it's the next HP. But anyone who makes their whole hard disk visible to the network is asking for trouble, as the warnings spread across everything I'm reading make pretty clear. A villain would have to have done that for you to be able download vengeful things onto theirs, and that seems unlikely, somehow.

Emma

This is pure supposition, but I don't know if it's even possible to share your entire hard disk to the network on Windows. Does Windows allow you to mark your complete C: drive as Shared, for example ? I have a nagging feeling it doesn't, but I can't remember. And as you point out, it would be the most incredibly idiotic thing to do. Surely anyone who is savvy enough to know about network file sharing would be smart enough not to do this. Also you'd have to go to the trouble (tries to remember Windows terminology) of explicitly granting Full Access to Everyone in the permissions for that shared drive which you would hope would ring alarm bells for even the most cavalier user.

This is not remotely true. Sharing a network does not mean you can access each others computers.

Griff, I've seen it done. Someone piggybacked the wireless connection of a capable hacker. The result was a load of bestial porn poured onto the offending computer.