Wi-Fi Or No-Wi

It’s expected that as residential VoIP becomes more popular, so to will Wi-Fi phones. To set up a Wi-Fi phone, you need a wireless router connected to your broadband Internet connection. But your Internet access is unavailable for some reason. Your laptop’s Wi-Fi card, however, is detecting a signal. Given the average range of most Wi-Fi routers, this signal is probably coming from a neighbour within a 100 yd radius, max. You need access to the Internet for whatever reason, maybe to make a VoIP call. You could hop in the car with your laptop and go to the local cafe or library. (Or use a regular phone, if you still have one.) Or borrow some of your neighbour’s Wi-Fi access. It’s just sitting there, available. What do you do?

Technically, borrowing a neighbour’s Internet is only illegal in some places (although this article says otherwise - it is, at least, unethical). In other places, you’d have to actually try to get into their computer and cause some sort of damage to be deemed as committing an illegal activity. The in-between scenario is that it’s illegal but not enforced. However, more municipalities are declaring simply “borrowing access” as an illegal activity. Particularly if you sit outside someone’s home and obviously try to access their Internet connection, which apparently seems to be a problem amongst teenage kids and some adults. But it can happen between houses as well.

Now, you might be of the mindset to team up and create your own neighbourhood Wi-Fi network. I know some people that intentionally keep their Wi-Fi connection open because there too many members of the household using it, on multiple computers, to make it convenient to have a password. But there’s a concern to keep in mind. If you leave your Wi-Fi open and someone uses it for illegal purposes, you may be liable, until you can prove you didn’t do it. Problem is, you’d be surprised how many people don’t secure their Wi-Fi connection. In early January 2005, I’d just received my new laptop, complete with Wi-Fi card. I was in the passenger seat of a friend’s car, headed for dinner.

Eager to try my laptop, I turned it on and inadvertently fell into war driving. As my friend kept driving, my Wi-Fi card discovered 20+ networks. About 15 of them, if I recall correctly, were unsecured. My friend was driving by at the speed limit through downtown, so it was actually too fast to hold any connnection long enough to actually get in. But two of the network names caught my attention. One belonged to a private school board, the other to some auxiliary police station that I’d never heard of. If at least the police station didn’t have its own secure access, what hope is there for the average citizen?

So if you are thinking of setting up a Wi-Fi network, especially if you boost the signal, you should seriously consider using a password on your network. Your broadband provider may not provide support for this (mine wouldn’t), but the company that made your wireless router will. Just make sure that you use a non-obvious, non-standard password, and that you write it down and keep it somewhere in the house, not on your computer.