Rob Morley wrote:

Thanks for your input - it's quite educational! There are a
few more questions below but if you are growing weary of
responding, not a problem.

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:48:51 +0100
Ted wrote:

Rob Morley wrote:

Just set up the encryption (WPA is more secure than WEP),
Sounds good. What exactly is it that is being encrypted?

The data content of each packet sent over the wireless connection.

Right. So does that mean that the router encrypts the
packets and that some decryption software is required to be
installed on the laptop receiving the packets?

One other security measure I forgot to mention: change the SSID
that your router uses from the default to something obscure - hackers
may scan for default values as a quick way of finding networks that
have had SSID broadcast disabled (lots of hardware comes configured with
values like 'wireless', 'WLAN', 'linksys' etc.)

So this would mean the router of the network to which I
connected was broadcasting SSID and my laptop automatically
picked it up and joined in the network?

Is there a way of preventing the laptop from connecting to
broadcasting foreign networks?

If I turn off SSID broadcast on my router, presumably I need
to configure something on the router together with a
matching counterpart something on the laptop so that the
laptop will find and connect with the router.

Ted