Ten FAQs about Wireless Home Networks

In This Chapter

Picking the right standard

Dealing with dead Internet connections

Getting games going

Keeping things secure

Finding out about firmware
Building a wireless network is getting a lot easier, but it still can be tough
to figure things out. One of the toughest things about a wireless network
is that when it breaks, it’s not like you can go see where it’s not plugged in,
like you often can with a wired network. With the advent of new security and
other logical layer configurations, it’s easy for things to get out of sync . . .
and yes, it can take a while to debug things.
As a starting point for issues, we asked vendors what questions pop up over
and over. The following lists those most frequently asked questions that
reflect some of the things that vendors felt users could benefit from knowing
more about (we spend the rest of the chapter providing the answers):
1. What standard is right for me?
2. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not by using
my wireless local area network (LAN). What am I doing wrong?
3. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
4. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
5. How do I secure my network from hackers?
6. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
7. What is firmware, and why might I need to upgrade it?
8. Isn’t Network Address Translation (NAT) the same as a firewall?
9. How can I find out my Internet Protocol (IP) address?
10. If everything stops working, what can I do?
If you don’t see the particular question that you’re asking in the preceding
list, we recommend that you at least skim through this chapter anyway. You
never know; you might find your answer lurking where you least expect it, or
you might come across a tidbit of information that will later come in handy.
And throughout this chapter, we also steer you to where in the book we further
discuss various topics — which might in turn lead you to your answer
(or to other tidbits of information that will later come in handy). What we’re
saying is that reading this chapter can only help you. And also check out
Chapter 18, where we give you some troubleshooting tips.
If you’re new to Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, this chapter is a
great place to start because you get a good overview to the things that a lot
of people ask (when they haven’t read the manual or this book!), and you can
get to some meat (hope you’re not vegetarian!) of the issues surrounding
wireless. So don’t feel bad if you feel like you’re reading the book backward.
(Just don’t read it upside down.)
We firmly believe in the power of the Web and of using vendor Web sites for
all they’re worth. Support is a critical part of this process. When you’re
deciding on a particular piece of equipment for your home network, take a
look at the support area on the vendor site for that device. Look at the frequently
asked questions (FAQs) for the device. This is where you might find
some of those hidden gotchas that you wish you knew before buying the gear.
Q. What standard is right for me?
This is probably the most-asked question, and you probably won’t like our
answer. No, it’s not, “It depends,” (we hate that answer, too); it’s, “Buy an
802.11a/g device as your core access point (AP) so that you can figure this out
down the road.” If you have some 802.11b gear in your house, no problem —
802.11g will support it, albeit at the lower 802.11b speeds. As the g hardware
comes down in price, you might find that you move your older b equipment
to that vacation home or use it elsewhere.
Also, some of the cable industry companies are moving to implement 802.11a
in their set top boxes, as are some specialty A/V companies. So you’ll want
some 802.11a around the house.
If we thought that you could get an a/g/Bluetooth device, we would say to grab
that, too, but that’s likely to be well down the pike. (Head over to Chapter 15
for the skinny on Bluetooth.)
Think of it this way: In the early days of radio, there were a lot of similar
debates over whether to buy an AM or FM radio. In fact, both have perfectly
valid uses and coexist nicely in AM/FM radios today. For the near term,
802.11a and 802.11b/g will both have their proponents, and both will likely be
needed in your household at some point regardless of which standard you
prefer. We think that by the end of 2003, a/g devices will be the standard
offering by the equipment manufacturers.
If you’re determined to pick one specific version, say 802.11b (after all, both
the 802.11a and g technologies are still relatively early in their lifecycle), we
respect that and feel that 802.11b will work great for almost all applications
with the exception of the high-bandwidth requirements of high-quality
streaming video. If you anticipate accessing video over your wireless network,
such as for streaming MovieLink movies-on-demand through your PC
over wireless to your home entertainment center, you’ll probably want to
boost this to an a or g connection. If you have a couple of microwaves and
lots of 2.4 GHz cordless phones around, 802.11a might be better for your environment.
Likewise, if your house is spread out and/or you’ve got 5 GHz
phones, 802.11g could be your answer.
For longevity and investment protection, we advocate 802.11 a/g dual-mode
APs.
Q. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not
by using my wireless LAN. What am I doing wrong?
In actuality, you are almost there. The fact that everything works for one configuration
and not for another actually rules out many potentialities. As long as
your AP and router are the same device (which is most common), you know
that the AP can talk to your Internet gateway (whether it’s your cable modem,
digital subscriber line [DSL] model, dialup routers, and so on). You know that
because when you’re connected via Ethernet, there is no problem. So the problem
is relegated to being between your AP and your client on your PC.
Most of the time, this is a configuration issue dealing with your Service Set
Identifier (SSID) and Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) configurations. Your
SSID denotes your service area ID for your LAN, and your WEP controls your
encryption keys for your data packets. Without both, you can’t decode the
signals traveling through the air.
Bring up your wireless configuration program, as we discuss in Chapter 6 and
recheck that your SSID is set correctly and that your WEP is likewise correct.
Try typing the word any into the SSID to see whether it finds the AP at that
point.
If neither of those is the problem, borrow a friend’s laptop with a compatible
wireless connection to see whether his card can find and sign onto your LAN
when empowered with the right SSID and WEP codes. If it can, you know that
it might be your client card. It could have gone bad.
Most cards (or any electronics, generally speaking) have technical problems
within the first 30 days if they’re going to go bad.
If your friend’s PC cannot log on, the problem might be with your AP. At this
point, we have to say, “Check out the vendor’s Web site for more specific
problem-solving ideas and call its tech support for further help.”
Q. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
This question has an easy answer and a not-so-easy answer. The easy answer
is that you can get your Xbox, PlayStation 2, or GameCube onto your wireless
LAN by linking the Ethernet port on your gaming device (if necessary, purchasing
a network adapter kit to add an Ethernet port on your system) with a
wireless bridge — which gets your gaming gear onto your wireless network in
a very easy fashion. You just need to be sure to set your bridge to the same
SSID and WEP as your LAN.
That’s the easy part, and you should now be able to access the Internet from
your box.
The tough part is allowing the Internet to access you and your gaming
system. This is required for certain games, two-way voice, and aspects of
multiplayer gaming. For this, you might need to open up certain ports in your
router to enable those packets bound for your gaming system to get there.
This is port forwarding (or something like that; vendors love to call things differently
amongst themselves). Port forwarding basically says to the router
that it should block all packets from accessing your system except those with
certain characteristics that you identify (these types of data packets can be
let through to your gaming server). We talk a lot about this in Chapter 11, so
be sure to read up on that before tinkering with your router configuration.
If this is too complex to pull off with your present router, you might consider
just setting up a demilitarized zone (DMZ) for your gaming application, where
this sits fairly open to the network. This is not a preferred setup, however, for
security reasons, and we recommend that you try to get port forwarding to
work. We discuss setting up a DMZ in Chapter 12.
Q. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
In some ways, videoconferencing is its own animal in its own world.
Videoconferencing has its own set of standards that it follows, typically has
specialized hardware and software, and until very recently, has required special
telephone lines to work.
The success of the Internet and its related protocols has opened this up to a
more mass market with IP standards-based Web cameras and other softwarebased
systems becoming popular.
Still, if you’ve installed a router with the appropriate protection from the
Internet bad guys, videoconferencing can be problematic for all the same reasons
as gaming that we mention earlier. You need to have packets coming into
your application just as much as you are sending packets out to someone.
Now wait a minute. You might be thinking, “Data packets come into my
machine all the time (like when I download Web pages), so what are you
saying?” Well, those packets are requested, and the router in your AP (or
your separate router, if that’s how your network is set up) knows that they’re
coming and lets them through. Videoconferencing packets are often unrequested,
which makes the whole getting-through-the-router thing a bit
tougher.
As such, the answer is the same as with gaming. You need to open ports in
your router (port forwarding) or to set up your video application in a DMZ.
Again, Chapter 12 can be a world of help here.
Q. How do I secure my network from hackers?
Nothing is totally secure from anything. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,”
tends to govern most discussions about someone hacking into your LAN. So
we tend to fall back on, “Unless you have some major, super-secret hidden
trove of something on your LAN that a lot of people would simply kill to have
access to, the chances of a hacker spending a lot of time to get on your LAN
is minimal.” This means that as long as you do the basic security enhancements
that we recommend in Chapter 10, you should be covered.
These basic enhancements cover
Securing your Internet connection: At a minimum, you should turn on
whatever firewall protection that your router offers. If you can, choose a
router that’s got Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). You should also use
antivirus software and seriously consider using personal firewall software
on your PCs. It’s defense in depth — after the bad guys get by your
router firewall’s Maginot line, you’ve got extra guns to protect your PCs.
(For a little historical perspective on defense strategies, read up on
Maginot and his fortification.)
Securing your airwaves: Because wireless LAN signals can travel right
through your walls and out the door, you should strongly consider turning
on WEP (and taking other measures that we discuss in Chapter 10)
to keep the next-door neighbors from snooping on your network.
Q. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
It’s often easy to determine whether you’ve opened up your ports because
your multiplayer gaming (or videoconferencing or whatever application
requiring port forwarding) now works — where it didn’t before.
However, the opposite is not always so easy to determine: that is, when you
have open ports that should be closed. This often happens when you open
ports for an application that you’re no longer using (but forgot to close the
ports again).
Plus, you might not have set things correctly in the first place.
We recommend the program ShieldsUP!! (www.grc.com). This program will
systematically test your router, effectively trying to break into your system
by using all commonly known techniques. The program will then issue you a
report that tells you how secure your router is — and if it’s not, what to do to
fix it. We highly recommend this.