Shared Wireless Wireless-Fidelity (Wi-Fi) Network

Shared Wireless

Wireless-Fidelity (WI-FI) network is a term for a high-frequency wireless local area network.

It lets home and office users create wireless local networks, which connect two or more computers to each other and a faster Internet line. A person with a Wi-Fi enabled device can connect to the Internet when located close to an access point (WiFi). The top reasons businesses and individuals are turning to WI-FI networks is to improve productivity with mobility, to provide access to places not possible to wire, and to more easily and cost effectively deploy LAN connectivity (Savvas, 2006). but, as this paper will discuss, these advantages come at a cost, most notably the difficult of prevented unwanted, shared wireless access.

Wi-Fi networks are challenged by issues related to performance, interference andimmature standards. However, security is by far the largest issue for users to consider. In a cabled network environment, a person must obtain physical access to a network outlet to gain access to the network. Access to the wireless network, on the other hand, is available within the operating area of the wireless base station which may be up to several hundred feet. Thus, the possibility of unauthorized access is a serious problem because anyone with a wireless data interface can gain access to the shared network (Issues with wireless networking at CWRU, 2001). There is no full-proof way to prevent unauthorized access and it's fairly easy to do.

Home users often fail to make any efforts to secure their wireless networks. More sophisticated businesses try to take measures such as using encryption standards and suppressing the access point's service set identifier broadcast so that only those computers with known addresses can join the network but, even these attemptss have flaws that leave wireless networks compromised (WiFi).

Experts estimate that as much as eighty percent of United States residential Wireless Local Area Networks will be classified as unsecure in 2007. Piggybackers take advantage of these unsecured open networks to gain free access by using the owner's bandwidth, usually without their knowledge. There are currently no laws or regulations to deal with this practice unless the piggybacker breaks other laws related to computer use during the process of piggybacking. and, even if there were, prosecution would be difficult in many circumstances because laptops often automatically connect to an open network, leaving little way to prove whether access was intentional (Ethical dilemmas of unsecured wireless networks).

Piggybackers defend their actions in a number of ways. Because they are accessing unsecured networks, they do not see their actions as stealing. They claim that they aren't really taking anything when they use a small amount of bandwidth that isn't generating any additional costs to the owner of the network who pays a flat monthly rate for the broadband service (Ethical dilemmas of unsecured networks). One piggybacker likened it to "reading the newspaper over someone's shoulder" (Marriott, 2006). Increasingly, those who pay for wireless service intentionally keep their networks open as a way to protest what they consider to be exorbitant fees charged by service providers (Marriott, 2006).

Those against piggybacking say this practice does have a cost for those paying for wireless services because their broadband connections are slowed down by additional piggybacker traffic, sometimes so much so that the access becomes unusable. Others argue that taking or borrowing without permission is unethical and that lack of security to not justify unauthorized access. Anti-piggybackers want laws to be introduced to prevent piggybacking just like unauthorized access to other types of property (Ethical dilemmas of unsecured wireless networks).