In the wireless network age, we need a bit of joined-up thinking
A friend of mine has an aunt who lives in Los Angeles. Recently she decided that she would like to have wireless networking in her home, and although she is not a techie, went out and bought a laptop and a Wi-Fi router, set up the base station and plugged it into her ADSL modem.
With one bound, she was free. Her computer no longer needed to be tethered, like a goat, to the wall. She could surf the web from every room in the house. It was intoxicating. But there was, she reported to her nephew, one mysterious fly in the ointment - her email wasn't working properly.
When he was next in LA, my friend called on her to see what the problem was. He discovered that there was nothing wrong with her Wi-Fi set-up. The problem was simply that her laptop was connecting to a neighbour's wireless connection. Once he got it hooked up to her own base station, everything worked fine. On further investigation, it turned out that there were several other wireless networks within reach in the same street.
