I guess many of us have heard of the term: WiFi. This term's been floating in many conversations, but how many people really know what it stands for? Wifi stands for Wireless Fidelity. Wireless technology is one of many that have changed how we do things. Take a piece of paper and jot down a few technologies that changed your lives. I'll start you off with a few: a remote control, the

Let's jump back 20-25 years ago. At that time, many people had a colour television, but was it common to have a wired/wireless remote control with it? Not at all, the first wired remote control was invented in 1950, and the first wireless remote control came 5 years later. The initial design of the wireless remote had some problems and the cost was quite high for this technology to be common. It was not until the early 1980s when we started to use IR (infrared) technology that a remote control was almost a standard for TVs.

Let's now jump to 2004. Instead of asking you to count the number of wireless products you have at home, try to count the number of wired products (don't include the power cord). Many may have a wired computer mouse, a wired console game controller, a wired keyboard. Some people who are up to technology may not even have such wired devices. If you compare the number of wireless devices you have, it may outnumber wired devices (Just think of the number of remote controls you have sitting on the edge of your couch).

I guess about 5 to 10 years ago, we used our phone lines to surf the Internet. Getting 28.8kbps to 56kbps connections were the usual speeds. Demand for more efficiency led to high-speed internet connected to our phone line or cable line. With high-speed, we were able to use routers to share our internet connection and be able to get faster speed on each computer. However, with a need for convenience, companies began to develop a great idea – the wireless router. This idea created many new ideas, new products and new security issues.

This new concept of Wireless Internet created many new functions: You are able to use your laptop to surf the Internet while you are at a restaurant. I guess this can get even more special when you can use your PDA to read the daily newspaper online when you are taking the bus, or going on a roadtrip.

With this technology, laptop makers started to equip laptops with built-in wireless adapter so that laptops don't have to be hooked with a cable to surf the web or to transfer information to another computer on the network. For video gamers, they are now able to connect their Playstation 2 or Xbox with a wireless network adapter so that they do not have to feed the cable from a router/modem to the TV room anymore. I guess the newest product this technology has brought is a wireless video camera. This could be use as a security camera where it can set video images to anywhere in the Internet.

On the down side, because of the convenient of wireless technology, the wireless router must be setup so that it's secure. Many people buy a router, plug it in, and use it; however by default, routers do not have any security settings set. You must log into the management console and setup WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Many manufacturers offer 64-bit, 128-bit and 256-bit encryption technology to encrypt and decrypt data. With this, you can surf and do your Internet banking in a more secured way. To double up the security, some routers offer MAC Filtering (MAC is a unique address that identifies your network adapter on your computer). MAC filtering allows you to set a list of machines that can access the router so that it blocks unauthorized computers or devices.

There are a few standards for wireless connections. Many people refer them as 11a, 11b, and 11g. In technological terms, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) refers this standard as 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g. What is the difference? Below is a chart of the differences in wireless standards.

Wireless technology has brought us to another step in technology. I remember in University, my business course professor said that information is money. I guess wireless technology has brought money over the air.