asoa's blog

Here I am in Trivandrum for a medical and wardrived almost all the major roads here and not even a single wi-fi signal was caught by my PDA.

Came home, we have a cable connection at home which was connected to a PC. The PC gets the IP via DHCP from the Cable Service provider. I tried connecting my iBook to the Cable Modem and I am not getting an IP as in the case of the PC. I needed to find a solution to check my mails from my iBook.

Since my room is on the ground floor and the PC with the cable connection is on the first floor, the best solution for me to use the laptop in my room and the sitting room would be to get a wireless router and connect it to the cable modem. We went to a few places and most of the guys doesn’t even know what a router (“rootere” – as they call it) is. Atlast we found a place where there are Linksys 802.11b and D-Link 802.11g routers. The choice was D-Link for a number of reasons. Speed, Size, Functions, Ability to operate in mixed mode are some of the few.

We got the router and when it comes for the configurations, the router doesn’t get the IP via DHCP too. Thought for a while on the issue and I cloned the MAC address from the PC’s network card to the router. Bingo! I got the connection. (That means the Cable Service provider has bound the MAC address of the PC’s network card so only that PC gets the IP via DHCP).

Connected the PC with the one of the routers LAN ports and setup wireless as an open system. Why an open? There are no hackers around? No much places around my home.

Wireless Security Is Bad For Your Health Scott Turner, wireless nonexpert, argues that wireless security is leading to a health epidemic.

Now I can run around my home either using my iBook or iPAQ to use Internet rather than sticking infront of the PC. Mobility is very important huh?