LAN - Local Area Network

Today I went to learn how to set-up a wireless network. I went there not knowing what I was going to do. But quickly learned that I was going to be setting this network. I was quite excited to be doing this, as I had set-up one wireless network before, but had lots of trouble setting it up. One thing I wish would have happened is that I didn't have to use a linksys router. The network I had set-up before was a linksys router. It would have been nice to get familiar with another brand name. Some things I learned that I did not know before was how to hide the SSID. This will come in handy when I try to convince my parents to let me set-up a wireless network at home. They are worried someone is going to hack in. I also learned that it is possible to limit only specific mac addresses to be able to connect to a certain network. This workshop really reinforced my desire to minor in CIS, as I really enjoyed what we did. One last thing I learned that I had no clue what it was before was the different channels. It especially good to know that most routers are default set-up on channel 6. You can use net stumbler to see the least used channel. I would highly recommend this workshop to anyone if they do it again.

Peace Jared

orb streaming

orb streaming
Originally uploaded by jaredjwestfall.

This is Orb streaming my music

PPC Software

The PPC is a great thing to have as you can put many different kinds of software on it. One software program that was shown to me in class is Orb. Orb is great if you don't want to put music on your PPC. What it does is loads all your multimedia onto the web and you can stream it from your PPC. I use it mainly to listen to music when walking around campus, especially when my I-Pod is dead. There really is not a bad thing about the program, except it runs a little slow at times and you need to have a Wi-Fi connection and the host computer has to be on to use it. Other than that it's a very useful program, especially if you do not have a memory chip for your PPC. I would highly suggest it to anyone that owns a PPC.

Andy and I went war driving together. We went war driving in Waltham and found an office building that had free wireless. The SSID of the network was room 124 and there was no WEP involved with the network. This was an office and it was probably free because they do not know how to set up a WEP key. I know a lot of homes don’t have a WEP key simply because they do not know how to set one up, and this is probably the same situation. The instructions on the routers usually do tell you how to set up a WEP key, but people simply do not read instructions these days, leaving their network vulnerable. Now that I know how to find free WIFI, I can pretty much get it anywhere, if people have it. It is useful if you need to check your e-mail really quick, check something online, or if you don’t have your cell phone, use skype to call someone.