Windows wireless discovery

Friday, May 15, 2009

Discovering a wireless network can be beneficial for a few reasons. Let us say you want to jump on your friend’s wireless network and not their neighbors. Windows wireless network discovery tool should do just fine for you. If you’re unsure of what this tool is go to a coffee shop with a laptop and turn it on. Chances are you will soon get a little bubble that pops up near your time and notifies you of detected wireless networks.
The Microsoft notification runs off a service called the wireless zero configuration. It is built into Microsoft Windows XP and Vista. It is a nice utility for the everyday computer user to show available wireless networks and provide information about them. The tool also gives a front end to allow users to connect.
When using this utility you may be prompted by a few items. One of the items is that the network is public. This could be a security risk because some individuals will set up their computer to look and function like a free wireless access point. When you connect to it and then surf the web information such as passwords and personal information may be captured. Make sure you know what networks you are connecting to.
You may also see a network that has some type of security. WEP was the old standard and has, to a point been replaced by WPA. Both of these come with some security issues but given a choice WPA is the way to go. If you need to get onto a network that requires a password simply obtain it from an administrator and type it in when prompted. Some businesses will have free wireless access but limit who uses it with a password. A simple way to keep out the riffraff.
Another type of network you may see is an ad-hoc network. This is a wireless network that is a computer to computer network. Again unless you know that you should be connecting to this network …..don’t. Chances are something untraditional is going on and unless you should be there you may run into issues.
So for today remember that the typical user will do just fine with what Microsoft has entrusted to us. However some administrators and IT pros may need a little more. I will discuss those tools as we go.