Networking Across the Pond
I've seen a lot of mixed 802.11b/g networks in Europe—most of them unsecure— and of course a selection of expensive pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi networks at hotels in cities. Curiously, one of the home-based 802.11g networks that I encountered was secured with the older WEP security standard instead of the more modern and secure WPA. In one case, I was even able to connect to a shared printer and print some driving directions, which was most useful. I'd previously been writing them down on a pad of paper after accessing the ViaMichelin Web site (Europe's answer to Yahoo Maps and MapQuest).

One problem I've had involves my PCs: Because of the amount and type of work I’m doing on this trip, I've brought two PCs and an Apple MacBook. The PCs, unfortunately, are both running the latest prerelease version of Windows Vista, which features an incomplete, buggy, and—in some cases—completely broken networking stack, making connecting to networks difficult. The MacBook and a co-traveler's Windows XP-based PC have had no such problems. But as industry pundit Jerry Pournelle likes to say, I make these mistakes so you don't have to. At least that's how I justify my own stupidity.

Anyway, it's impossible to spend any time in Europe and not think about the future. Europe, interestingly, is moving down a path that the United States would be wise to study, and the ongoing push to centralize around the European Union (EU) will have a far-reaching impact on all of Europe at a variety of levels. Technologically, Europe has much better cellular services than the United States does and, unexpectedly, has much faster Internet access in some areas. There will always be exceptions, of course—some rural areas of France have proven impervious to my desires to get online—but the situation is improving all the time. As I watch kids playing wireless PlayStation Portable (PSP) games with each other on buses, young adults tapping Short Message Service (SMS) and email messages on cellular phones, and people wirelessly computing on park benches in city centers, I have to wonder where it’s all heading.

Clearly, we're heading toward an age in which all telephone communications occur over the Internet instead of the switch-based networks that traditional telephone companies currently maintain. Wide-area wireless networks will cover urban areas first, and the rest of the world eventually, in the same way that cellular coverage has grown from niche to necessity. Until that happens, we're stuck with reliable but hard-wired traditional telephones, often unreliable cellular networks, and local Wi-Fi access only—often at alarmingly slow speeds. I can't help you with the first two concerns, but I do have a few bits of advice for that last one.

Take It Up a Notch
First, get the fastest Internet connection you can get or afford. In my area, that means a fiber-based broadband connection courtesy of Verizon FIOS that offers 15Mbps downstream speeds and 2Mbps up. If you can't get fiber, cable modems typically offer the next-best connection, followed by DSL. Consider anything else—satellite and, ugh, dialup—to be fallback options only, relegated mostly to rural areas that just can't get a good broadband connection.

Why do you need this kind of speed? Increasingly, you’ll do everything over an IP network, including telephone calls—often free or very cheap via Voice over IP (VoIP) services such as Skype—movie and on-demand TV downloads, shopping, video gaming, and so on. Your broadband connection is the superhighway between your home and the outside world. Make it a good one.

Networking at Home
Although I think we're long past the time when anyone would connect a PC directly to a broadband connection, good advice always bears repeating: Don't do it. Instead, put a router, switch, or wireless access point (AP) between your PC (or PCs) and the connection. This device will have a hardware firewall—always recommended in addition to the software firewall that your OS or security software suite supplies—and, if wirelessly enabled, wireless features and security settings that you can configure.

In a home setting, you should be using 100Mbps wired networking at a minimum (1Gbps, if you're particularly technical and know that your hardware supports it) and 802.11g (54Mbps) wireless functionality, unless you have any legacy 802.11b (11Mbps) devices. If you do, remember that your entire network will slow down to the 11Mbps speed when an 802.11b device is connected.

Better yet, think about 802.11n, which is sometimes referred to as Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) or Wireless-N. The 802.11n standard offers speeds that are roughly two to four times as fast as of 802. Unfortunately, 802.11n won't be ratified as a true standard any time soon—it could be as late as 2008—but no matter. Every major wireless hardware vendor is creating 802.11n-based devices, including add-on cards for notebooks and desktop PCs. Some of the 802.11n-based routers are positively scary looking, with several antennas poking every which way. But they offer the kind of performance you'll need for such high-bandwidth tasks as streaming HDTV signals.

Keep It Secure
I’ve seen a lot of baloney printed about wireless security. The truth is that although no home network is truly secure, you can minimize your exposure by doing the right thing. Think of wireless security like the locks on your door: No lock is going to stop a professional thief, but locking the door and turning on some lights when you leave the house is a common-sense step you can take that will cause casual thieves to move on to more compelling victims.

In other words, enabling WPA2 security or even filtering MAC addresses won't stop hard-core criminals. But such precautions will prevent the teenager next door from hopping on your PC and downloading your personal photos. And really, that's the kind of protection you want. There are some home-networking security myths that don't hold up to real-world experience. For example, hiding the Service Set Identifier (SSID)—broadcasting the network name—will just make it hard for real users to get online, as will disabling DHCP (which automatically provides clients with IP addresses). Neither will deter actual thieves.

The Future Is Now
In the future, when everyone is using home networks for media sharing, online gaming, and other entertainment; performing network-based storage and file backup; and using an incalculable number of networked but non-PC devices, we'll look back at these early days in the same way that we nostalgically recall 8-track tapes and black-and-white TV. But you don't have to be sitting in a coffee shop in Europe to see the future happening. It’s happening right now in your home.

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Reader Comments
I'm still amazed how people come to Europe and experience the level of broadband access as an in-your-face fact. Now I realise that this is France you're talking about and I can’t say that I've ever been there nor do I know about their level of development in the broadband business. But I'd like to point towards Sweden, my country. What I've understood we are one of the leading countries in the world when it comes to broadband. We got ridiculously high speeds for almost no cost at all and no special restrictions in the usage of them. As an example let's take BBB ("BredBandsBolaget" or “BroadbandCompany” in English). BBB currently got the offer of 100Mbit/s downstream and 10Mbit upstream for about $40 a month. They upgraded to this speed from 10/10Mbit at additional cost. This is a city connection thought, if you as I do live in the country you'll have to do with the much worse ADSL connections of just 24Mbit downstream and 1Mbit upstream, again at $30-$40 a month. And I live far out in no-man’s-land. So ok then, we got high speed connections, what’s the catch? To be honest... hell if I know? We don’t have download limits, they don’t block us from downloading whatever we want, they don’t block the usage of any ports, other then occasionally port 25 due to spam, apparently. We get the modem for free and it costs nothing to get it connected, whatever the speed of the connection. Don’t ask me how this came to be, I don’t know and to be honest I can’t understand why the development of high speed internet takes such time in other countries. As 100Mbit is getting around to being standard in the big cities the new high-end connection is 1Gbit, all available to the average Joe. Considering Sweden just recently passed 9 million people in population we got some rather neat connections. Over and out for me and my first comment on this page ever! Linus Askerlund -August 16, 2006 Sorry about the double post, just felt obligated to correct the following: "They upgraded to this speed from 10/10Mbit at additional cost." What I meant to say was at NO additional cost. Guess things like that slip by me at 3:45 in the morning... But hey, now I have two posts on this page, neat. Linus Askerlund -August 16, 2006 Not really a comment--more of a request: To follow the advice you give, it would be helpful to an amateur like myself to have a diagram/visual schematic of what you are suggesting--and some examples of easily obtained hardware one could find to do this, e.g., at CompUSA, or other similar places. General price breakdown, etc. Gene R. Nathans Gene R. Nathans -August 16, 2006 Not really a comment--more of a request: To follow the advice you give, it would be helpful to an amateur like myself to have a diagram/visual schematic of what you are suggesting--and some examples of easily obtained hardware one could find to do this, e.g., at CompUSA, or other similar places. General price breakdown, etc. Gene R. Nathans Gene R. Nathans -August 16, 2006 Linus: It's called COMPETITION And, it's also because you don't have the GREEDY American Telephone Companies and Cable Companies. Jim -August 17, 2006 I marvel about the fact that Paul is amazed to find broadband (wireless) connections in Amstelveen. 11 million Dutch (aged 15 or older) use the internet in The Netherlands and they do that with an average of 43,5 hours per month. The Netherlands are in the top of OESO countries with the highest number of broadband users, more then 25 users per 100 inhabitants. In the US it is 17 users per 100 inhabitants. These figures are from end 2005, but it will give an idea… Greetings from Amstelveen (luckily we have broadband in this town...), Mark. Mark Moree -August 17, 2006 Some good observations about wireless systems in Europe. You should also spend some time reviewing what is happening with the Home Gateway Initiative (www.homegateway.org). If this gets completed, the home and public spaces will be even more friendly in the EU. Please be careful about making statements about just how good 802.11n is going to be (real soon now). It will not be capable of carrying HDTV signals. It may be able to carry compressed MPEG-2/4 streams that can be decoded and displayed in HD, but it won't carry the raw HDTV signal that uses an HDMI connection. That requires a minimum of 1.3 Gbps and can't be compressed in all cases. John John Barr -August 18, 2006 I agree with John, Wireless has it's limitations, but you did say in the home to go with a Wired Network. I agree 100%, I wired my house 7 years ago with Cat5e Ethernet and now I am beginning to totally use it. Before I just used it for Computer Networking, now I have my Home Entertainment Unit connected to it. I can stream DVD quality Video with no problem. Alex Chavarin -September 22, 2006 READER COMMENTS: We want to hear what you have to say about this article!     Acceptable Use Policy Your Comments (required): Your email is only used if our editors need to contact you. It is not used or stored for any other purpose, nor posted with your comments. Enter the text from the image below Please refresh the page if you have trouble reading this text.