Linksys Networks: The Official Guide Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It is an improvement on the documentation that comes from Linksys, but I was disappointed. It could have had a few more pictures, and I was expecting detailed explanations on how to configure all features of a router. When I got to the VPN portion of the book, which I was particularly interested in, it said, "See a consultant." Needless to say, that wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. But if you're just getting started, it will probably help you.

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The officially-endorsed guide from the #1 small office/home office networking equipment provider! Learn to build a wireless or wired network in your home or office, select the right hardware and components, get troubleshooting advice, and much more.

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Linksys® Networks: The Official Guide, 3rd Ed. (One-Off) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is very much a how-to book. There is little on network principles. The other side of that is it misses little in how to install, bring to life, and manage a home network. If you have Linksys hardware, you'll find the content directly addresses your needs; yet, despite its name, the book is not that Linksys specific.
Glenn covers four topics especially well: network security, resource sharing, tips and troubleshooting, and advanced network tools. The latter, in an appendix, presents Windows graphical and command-line network tools. It makes Windows XP network diagnostic tools available to just about anyone, even those with no technical exposure to networking.
If you just want the practical details on how to set up a wired or wireless network, you would probably give Linksys Networks five stars. I wanted more on principles.


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Wireless Home Networking in Easy Steps Review

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(More customer reviews)I was a computer software engineer for thirty years and invented global a VPN telephony database systems in the 1980s. I have a degree in mathematics from M.I.T. After losing touch with newer technologies in more recent decades, I decided to get acquainted with modern home networking and install my own system with mix-and-match modems, routers, and operating systems, left over from a recent business venture, but all in new condition. After many hours of study and experiment with this book, I could not make my home system work or even understand the self-referential vocabulary. My final solution was to buy all new equipment, which installed quickly and easily from the enclosed CD. (By the way, the equipment, bought refurbished, cost barely more than the two useless books I threw away.)
If I can't follow this book's "easy steps," then nobody can, except people already steeped in the subject, or whose equipment happens to be identical to that used in the book's examples. I plan to give this book as a Christmas present to someone I don't like.

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From understanding the basic jargon to setting up and choosing the best products for individual requirements, this handy guide covers every aspect of home networking. Using a simple, step-by-step approach and screenshots, author Bill Westhead explains how to secure and protect a network from unauthorized use and reduce the risk of network hijacking and identity theft. Also here are useful definitions of terms and a troubleshooting guide for identifying common problems with hardware, software, and configurations and quickly solving them.

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Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking Review

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(More customer reviews)"For those who want to make the most out of their WRT54G you can learn how to port code and develop your own software for the OpenWRT operating system."
"Full coverage on embedded device development using the WRT54G and OpenWRT"
Unfortunately due to publication deadlines, much of the technical content of the book was dropped; it nolonger contains the chapters referenced in the above Amazon description, instead it focuses on giving brief reviews of the various firmwares available, along with hardware and software hacks. While it offers a good overview, the book falls short in technical depth and accuracy.
There are several places in the book where the information is either outdated or innacurate. Some examples -
OpenWrt should not be upgraded through the use of the "ipkg upgrade"; OpenWrt uses a filesystem overlay where the filesystem (squashfs) is readonly but appears writable by redirecting write access to another filesystem (jffs2). Attempting to upgrade will result in filesystem duplication; there are several warnings on the OpenWrt site regarding this.
The failsafe feaure is not new to OpenWrt's RC5 release; there has always been a failsafe proceeedure, but the instructions prior to the RC5 release were slightly different; failsafe was redesigned in RC5 to make it easier to access.
The example of blackholing advertisers through the use of dns using dnsmasq suggests rewriting the dnsmasq.conf; while the example does work, it creates a mess out of the configuration and involves many unnecessary steps. The same task could be acomplished much more easily by simply adding the hostnames to the /etc/hosts file.
The nvram-clean script does not actually reset the nvram configuration to defaults as described. The nvram-clean script only has a handful of known superfluous variables to remove; these are variables created by other firmwares that are nolonger required. It will not set any variables to their defaults; the defaults are device specific and setting them incorrectly would result in an unbootable device.

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This book will teach the reader how to make the most of their WRT54G series hardware. These handy little inexpensive devices can be configured for a near endless amount of networking tasks.The reader will learn about the WRT54G's hardware components, the different third-party firmware available and the differences between them, choosing the firmware that is right for you, and how to install different third-party firmware distributions.Never before has this hardware been documented in this amount of detail, which includes a wide-array of photographs and complete listing of all WRT54G models currently available, including the WRTSL54GS.Once this foundation is laid, the reader will learn how to implement functionality on the WRT54G for fun projects, penetration testing, various network tasks, wireless spectrum analysis, and more!This title features never before seen hacks using the WRT54G.For those who want to make the most out of their WRT54G you can learn how to port code and develop your own software for the OpenWRT operating system.*Never before seen and documented hacks, including wireless spectrum analysis*Most comprehensive source for documentation on how to take advantage of advanced features on the inexpensive wrt54g platform*Full coverage on embedded device development using the WRT54G and OpenWRT

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Absolute Beginner's Guide to Wi-Fi Wireless Networking Review

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(More customer reviews)It was with a little trepidation that I decided it was time to go Wi-Fi. Being a Harold Davis fan for some time, I picked up a copy of his book. Good decision! To start with he helped me decide whether to get a wirelss card for my old faithful laptop, or to get a new one. I went for a new machine (SONY VAIO TR3A). Setting it up was easy. With his book's step-by-step instructions, it was almost as though I had the author at my side. Highly recommended.

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Wi-Fi Hotspots: Setting Up Public Wireless Internet Access Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is perfectly focused on the intention of setting Public Wi-Fi Hotspots. By this I mean that the book doesn't load you down with all the technical details of how wireless networks work, but instead dives right into the business/organizational benefits of running such a network as a hotspot. There is a very brief chapter at the end that gives an overview of RF or wireless signals (literally 14 pages) and this is perfect. Great job staying on focus.
The book presents the implementation of Wi-Fi Hotspots from start-to-finish covering these topics:
-Why Implement a Hotspot
-Simple Quick-Install Hotspots
-Adcvanced Hotspot technologies
-Marketing your hotspot
-Avoiding freeloaders who consume your bandwidth
-Common problems and resolutions
-Hotspot safety and security
...among others. If you are considering implementing a hotspot for pay or for marketing purposes, this book is a great place to start. -Tom Carpenter, Author: Wireless# Certification Official Study Guide, CWNA Certification Official Study Guide 4th Edition, CWSP Certification Official Study Guide 2nd Edition

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Wireless Hacks: Tips & Tools for Building, Extending, and Securing Your Network Review

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(More customer reviews)I'll have to disagree a bit with reviewer Pablo D. The book is broad and shallow, but I think it appeals to more than just the raw beginner. I found a number of tricks (hard to call them "hacks") in the book that have been useful. While many of the topics covered are simply product reviews, that information is helpful to wireless users, too.
Here's the table of contents of the book, which spells out all 100 "hacks":
Chapter 1. The Standards
1. 802.11: The Mother of All IEEE Wireless Ethernet
2. 802.11a: The Betamax of the 802.11 Family
3. 802.11b: The De Facto Standard
4. 802.11g: Like 802.11b, only Faster
5. 802.16: Long Distance Wireless Infrastructure
6. Bluetooth: Cable Replacement for Devices
7. 900 MHz: Low Speed, Better Coverage
8. CDPD, 1xRTT, and GPRS: Cellular Data Networks
9. FRS and GMRS: Super Walkie-Talkies
10. 802.1x: Port Security for Network Communications
11. HPNA and Powerline Ethernet
12. BSS Versus IBSS
Chapter 2. Bluetooth and Mobile Data
13. Remote Control OS X with a Sony Ericsson Phone
14. SMS with a Real Keyboard
15. Photo Blog Automatically with the Nokia 3650
16. Using Bluetooth with Linux
17. Bluetooth to GPRS in Linux
18. Bluetooth File Transfers in Linux
19. Controlling XMMS with Bluetooth
Chapter 3. Network Monitoring
20. Find All Available Wireless Networks
21. Network Discovery Using NetStumbler
22. Network Detection on Mac OS X
23. Detecting Networks Using Handheld PCs
24. Passive Scanning with KisMAC
25. Establishing Connectivity
26. Quickly Poll Wireless Clients with ping
27. Finding Radio Manufacturers by MAC Address
28. Rendezvous Service Advertisements in Linux
29. Advertising Arbitrary Rendezvous Services in OS X
30. "Brought to you by" Rendezvous Ad Redirector
31. Detecting Networks with Kismet
32. Running Kismet on Mac OS X
33. Link Monitoring in Linux with Wavemon
34. Historical Link State Monitoring
35. EtherPEG and DriftNet
36. Estimating Network Performance
37. Watching Traffic with tcpdump
38. Visual Traffic Analysis with Ethereal
39. Tracking 802.11 Frames in Ethereal
40. Interrogating the Network with nmap
41. Network Monitoring with ngrep
42. Running ntop for Real-Time Network Stats
Chapter 4. Hardware Hacks
43. Add-on Laptop Antennas
44. Increasing the Range of a Titanium PowerBook
45. WET11 Upgrades
46. AirPort Linux
47. Java Configurator for AirPort APs
48. Apple Software Base Station
49. Adding an Antenna to the AirPort
50. The NoCat Night Light
51. Do-It-Yourself Access Point Hardware
52. Compact Flash Hard Drive
53. Pebble
54. Tunneling: IPIP Encapsulation
55. Tunneling: GRE Encapsulation
56. Running Your Own Top-Level Domain
57. Getting Started with Host AP
58. Make Host AP a Layer 2 Bridge
59. Bridging with a Firewall
60. MAC Filtering with Host AP
61. Hermes AP
62. Microwave Cabling Guide
63. Microwave Connector Reference
64. Antenna Guide
65. Client Capability Reference Chart
66. Pigtails
67. 802.11 Hardware Suppliers
68. Home-Brew Power over Ethernet
69. Cheap but Effective Roof Mounts
Chapter 5. Do-It-Yourself Antennas
70. Deep Dish Cylindrical Parabolic Reflector
71. "Spider" Omni
72. Pringles Can Waveguide
73. Pirouette Can Waveguide
74. Primestar Dish with Waveguide Feed
75. BiQuad Feed for Primestar Dish
76. Cut Cable Omni Antenna
77. Slotted Waveguides
78. The Passive Repeater
79. Determining Antenna Gain
Chapter 6. Long Distance Links
80. Establishing Line of Sight
81. Calculating the Link Budget
82. Aligning Antennas at Long Distances
83. Slow Down to Speed Up
84. Taking Advantage of Antenna Polarization
85. Map the Wireless Landscape with NoCat Maps
Chapter 7. Wireless Security
86. Making the Best of WEP
87. Dispel the Myth of Wireless Security
88. Cracking WEP with AirSnort: The Easy Way
89. NoCatAuth Captive Portal
90. NoCatSplash and Cheshire
91. Squid Proxy over SSH
92. SSH SOCKS 4 Proxy
93. Forwarding Ports over SSH
94. Quick Logins with SSH Client Keys
95. "Turbo-Mode" SSH Logins
96. OpenSSH on Windows Using Cygwin
97. Location Support for Tunnels in OS X
98. Using vtun over SSH
99. Automatic vtund.conf Generator
100. Tracking Wireless Users with arpwatch
Appendix: Deep Dish Parabolic Reflector Template

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The popularity of wireless networking has grown exponentially over the past few years, despite a general downward trend in the telecommunications industry. More and more computers and users worldwide communicate via radio waves every day, cutting the tethers of the cabled network both at home and at work.

Wireless technology changes not only the way we talk to our devices, but also what we ask them to do. With greater flexibility, broader range, and increased mobility, wireless networks let us live, work, and think differently. Wireless networks also open up a vast range of tasty new hack possibilities, from fine-tuning network frequencies to hot-rodding handhelds.

The second edition of Wireless Hacks, co-authored by Rob Flickenger and Roger Weeks, brings readers more of the practical tips and tricks that made the first edition a runaway hit, selling nearly 30,000 copies. Completely revised and updated, this version includes over 30 brand new hacks, major overhauls of over 30 more, and timely adjustments and touchups to dozens of other hacks introduced in the first edition. From passive network scanning to aligning long-distance antennas, beefing up wireless network security, and beyond, Wireless Hacks answers real-life networking needs with direct solutions.

Flickenger and Weeks both have extensive experience in systems and network administration, and share a passion for making wireless more broadly available. The authors include detailed coverage for important new changes in specifications and in hardware and software, and they delve deep into cellular and Bluetooth technologies.

Whether you need your wireless network to extend to the edge of your desk, fit into your backpack, or cross county lines, the proven techniques in Wireless Hacks will show you how to get the coverage and functionality you're looking for.

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