Thursday, August 26, 2010

Open or closed . . .

Someone I know, mentioning no names, is trying to set up a network between two nearby dwelling places. I have to wonder how this is going. Well, I hope.

I don't like being a pest about asking. But still, is there hope? Can the speech across the airways via telephone be duplicated via written word through computer media?

My grandmother would not believe it. Telephones were hardwired and lines were shared, called party lines, in her day. A private line? Why, when the party line could provide so much information to fellow users, intended or not.

The old telephone party line was similar to an unsecured network is in the present day: open to anyone who picked up a connected telephone handset and listened. Except that now, unsecured networks can be open to anyone who cares to park close by, log in, and look around. There is not a click to alert the user that someone else is "on the line."

Password protection. It's all good.


3 comments:

ol Doc said...

We are Netgear N Router enabled. The range is farther out into the yard but still not as strong in the mobile home. Probably all that metal - We will keep playing with location and see if things improve.

ol Doc said...

Another thought: Great Grandmother McKemie may not have been able to imagine using the internet or even speaking on a telephone you'd carry around and take out of your hip pocket; she could, while wearing a skirt and petticoats down to her ankles - stand up straight and tinkle with nary a drop on her crinoline. She was, in her own way - a very practical woman and her youngest grandchild (Mom) admired her greatly.

RANGER said...

Still haven't been able to figure out how that trick is accomplished. Of course, I haven't field tested the attempt so I guess will never know . . .

It might be the metal, indeed. Or your walls plus the metal. Router on dining room table? Near sliders? Reaching here, just reaching.