Cheap and easy

Author's Rating:

Pros: No more cables. No more worms.

Cons: Very small security risks.

The Bottom Line: 
If you're currently naked to the net, you need to get a firewall of some kind in place. This device does the trick, and provides wireless convenience to boot.

Author's Review
This is a fine wireless SOHO solution.

I'm using it between my DSL four port router and my internal NYC apartment network. For a cable modem, you'd do just what I did--connect the router to your cable modem using standard netwok cable. Set-up was quick and easy; instructions were very clear. Setup of two of the three devices to be hooked up had WiFi installed by the manufacturer. For the third, I bought a wireless usb adapter, also from LinkSys, which was plug and play on a Windows2000 machine.

This is a good time to be looking at devices like this one, because of the recent surge in internet worms. Installing this router between your computer(s) and a single user dsl or cable modem connection provides a feature called Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT is the central feature of a hardware firewall. Setting up the router takes your computer's address off the internet. This is much more secure than a software firewall. With this device in place, I did not have to worry about the Blaster worm or its variants. (You still have to practice safe computing to defend yourself against email viruses like SoBig, by not opening executable files that are emailed to you unless you are certain that they are clean. Or, as in my case, you can use an email provider that filters out infected attachments before delivery.)

Beyond security issues, there are two basic benefits in installing a wireless router. The first is that, because it's a router, you can support multiple computers (or playstations or PDAs) on a single internet connection. The second is that, because its wireless, you don't have cable to pull, cable to hide, cable to trip over.

There are a few things to be careful of. First, make sure you use the 128 bit encryption option, unless you want folks nearby riding on your network. Second, when you set up the Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP), DO NOT LOSE YOUR PASSWORD. It's longer than your other passwords, so you probably can't use one of your standard password. And you won't need it much--only when setting up a new device. So you won't remember it when you need it.

Third, make sure you get the wireless router that's best for you. There are two protocols in use now: 802.11b and 802.11g. The latter is faster and is backward compliant with the former, but doesn't do you any good if the devices you're putting onto your network only support 802.11b.

A final caveat is that WEP is not entirely and completely secure. The design of the protocol makes a brute force attack possible if run continuously for 2 weeks or more. (For details see http://www.informit.com/isapi/product_id~{BD2FCF75-BDEF-4AD4-B0DB-C02582811000}/content/index.asp)

If you have classified or otherwise sensitive material that makes you a target of sophisticated crackers, you might want to check with whatever security expert authorized you to have that material on whether WiFi is appropriate for you.

If you fit this profile, and do not have any kind of router or firewall between yourself and the internet, get yourself a regular old cabled router. Now.

But for the rest of us, wireless is very convenient, and poses no real risk, as long as you use the 128 bit encryption scheme.