Of course, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to change one??™s MAC
address, such as troubleshooting or conflict management. Even your router
probably has a way to change its MAC address??”via the MAC Address
Clone feature??”to match your PC??™s address so remote servers that have been
configured to permit access from your PC won??™t reject your router.
All this means that there??™s no such thing as an impentetrable wireless network.
If you really care about security, abandon wireless and stick with cables.
372 | Chapter 7: Networking and Internet
Connect to a Public Wireless Network
The point of wireless networking is not necessarily to do away with a few
feet of cables, but to make a network do things it could never do before. For
instance, if you have a portable computer equipped with wireless, you
should be able to walk into any airport, coffee shop, hotel, or college dormitory
and connect to the Internet in a matter of seconds. In more populated
areas, it??™s not uncommon to walk down the street and have your pick of
WiFi networks. (See the sidebar ???The Ethics of WiFi,??? next, for an extra
consideration.)
As described in ???Sniff Out WiFi Hotspots,??? earlier in this chapter, you can
connect to any unsecured wireless network that Vista??™s built-in WiFi sniffer
is able to detect. (The exceptions, of course, are those networks requiring a
paid subscription or account access, but that??™s a different story.) This
applies to networks you??™ll encounter while you??™re on the road, as well as
those that are in range of your home or office.
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