Considering wireless for your SOHO?

Wireless offers SOHOs many advantages. No expensive and disruptive cable runs to be made. No holes in your walls and ceilings, or no ceiling tiles popped up, dust spread around, and hammer-drills running during business hours. Freedom to move you laptop from room to room. Plug in a little to power here and there and your ready to go. Well, maybe not...

You have to pay attention when dealing with wireless technology. You have to plan, and better yet, test first. Wireless technology has its own set of snags that aren't advertised on the box at your favorite computer supply supercenter.

Step one, stay away from 802.11b. Unless you don't mind sharing your machines and your bandwidth with every third rate cracker and script kiddie in your city. It is just too easy to circumvent the security and use the network. That means 802.11g. Have someone that knows security choose you solution. Between Rockwell and Broadway extension alone, there 75 unsecured access points -- these were mapped with free software downable on the Internet and without really trying.

Step two, remember it is always easier if the access points and the cards come from the same manufacturer. This isn't a must, just easier -- you'll run into fewer issues. This becomes a hard rule if you are implementing vendor specific security features that aren't part of the official IEEE standard. Other cards won't have the same options.

Step three, have a site survey done. This is important. Wireless is running over radio waves. And the propagation of radio waves is dependent on many factors. Rather than guess the condition of the air space in your environment, test it. A good site survey will determine the number of access points you need and their prime locations.

Step four, force you network to 802.11g. The g access points will talk to b devices unless you tell them not to. Tell them not to.

Step six. Set it up and change the default SSID.