Your wireless network is more powerful than you imagine. Use this guide to fully understand and utilise it.
The growth of home networking in the past five years has been phenomenal. In 2001, it was rare to find anyone, bar those who ran a business at home and a few committed enthusiasts, who would have any kind of network installed at home. Now, the vast majority of PC Authority readers are in that category. The reasons don’t just come down to falling PC prices and increasing numbers of multi-PC homes, but to the ubiquity of ADSL and 802.11g wireless kit. By getting rid of the need for unsightly cables and providing protocols and services that were relatively easy to set up, even for the layman, Wi-Fi made the talk of wireless networking a reality. We can browse the Web, check email, do business and play games from every room in the house.
Yet 802.11g is just the beginning. A new generation of wireless networking is finally coming of age. Technologies such as MIMO are dramatically improving both the speeds and the reach of the home network. We can access the Internet from more places inside and outside the house, and swap huge files between computers in seconds, not minutes. But why limit yourself to the same old boring applications? Using a next-generation wireless home network solely for Web browsing and email is a waste when this enhanced technology enables a whole new range of exciting, practical and innovative uses. With MIMO, Draft-N and eventually fully fledged 802.11n, concepts and technologies like wireless VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), the home hub, high-definition streaming media and NAS (network attached storage) really come into their own. You could be doing so much more.
And that’s what this feature is about: helping you to understand the benefits of wireless networking in the home, so you can make the most of whatever you’re using, now. When you’re ready to make that investment in next-generation technology, you’ll be able to reap all the possible rewards. We’ll look at extending the reach of your home network, setting up an NAS as a home media server so you can have music or video in every room, enjoying the low-cost/no-cost flexibility of wireless VoIP, and much more. This needn’t be expensive and it’s much easier than you might expect.