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May
4th
ProShow Gold.
June
1st
Building The Club Website.
June
29th
Adobe Acrobat Professional.
August
24th
Problem Solving Forum.
September
21st
Small Form Factor Computers.
October
19th
Graphics.
November 16th
Digital Cameras.
December
14th
Digital Photo Competition.
Last
Month
At
last months meeting we had a look at the basic principles of home
networks and some of the hardware needed to get a network up and
running. We looked at a simple network of 2 computers and then
moved on to using a hub or switch to enable several computers
and other devices to be connected together. Having gone through
the basics of wired networks we then moved on to wireless networking.
It is becoming more popular for people to have a wireless network
at home. A wireless network enables you to roam around the house
and make use of all your resources from anywhere. We used a wireless
router to demonstrate the principles of setting up such a network,
that was after overcoming the small problem of the wireless link
not working. This was a useful demonstration of not relying on
a wireless link, I had been playing about with security settings
on the router earlier in the day and had not returned everything
to default. I had left some encryption on the router but removed
it from the remote PC, this meant that I could not gain access
to the router configuration page over the wireless link. This
meant that I had to connect to the router over a wired link which
is not subject to encryption so that I could check the setup.
This showed that the router was encrypted so removing that enabled
the wireless link to work.
We then discussed the security issues with wireless networks and
the fact that if you run a network without encryption anyone within
range can connect to your network and access the internet via
your ISP. A more important fact is that they could potentially
access your computer and its data. I then demonstrated the correct
sequence for setting up wireless security so that your system
is protected.
At this point we had about run out of time which meant I had could
not demonstrate some software for capturing data on the fly. If
we get chance I will revisit the subject later in the year.
Derek
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