The technologies that I love : Wireless Fidelity

I'm a fairly techie person. Having owned my first x86 PC back in 1996, and getting on the Internet around 1997, I have always tried to keep in touch with all the latest tech news and gadgets and if able, own some of them.

Ever since I got on the Internet, our main problem was that we could only access it from our PC. And since we only had one PC and one modem attached to it, we had to alternately use it. And with 2 other siblings sharing, it was such a pain waiting in line to get the chance to go online.

Back then, I didn't know anything about networking, and I never occurred to me to set up one at home. I always thought you only did that for businesses. Especially since most networking equipment you needed might have cost an arm and a leg during the early 2000s.

But after getting broadband internet at home around 2003 (geez, has it been that long? That means Ive been a loyal BayanDSL user for a decade!), my soon to be brother-in-law (who's a Network Engineer then) introduced me to the wonderful world of Home Networking.

He gave me a Linksys WRT54G and connected it with our dsl modem. It's a router that has 4-wired ports for use with ethernet cables, and wireless-G for use with wifi-enabled gadgets. And my life has never been the same.

Having wifi, allowed us mobility. We no longer needed to connect a wired cable from our laptops to the router just to be able to access the internet. Having wifi-enabled laptops allowed us access the internet all at the same time. I could bring my laptop from our living room, to my bedroom without having to disconnect and connect cables. When I cooked, I could bring the laptop to the kitchen and look up the recipes online.

And that was when you can only access the Internet on PCs. But with the introduction of wifi-enabled phones and tablets, it literally changed my world.

Now I can access my stored files on any of my PCs and laptops from my phone or my tablet. I can listen to music, look at pictures, watch movies that I stored on my media server, anywhere inside the house and even a few meters outside. I no longer need to sit in front of a PC. I could be lying on my side on my bed, stand outside the gate, or even inside the bathroom and still be able to do anything i want because of my wifi setup at home.

You were no longer tied to a router via a network cable. Everything's wireless. And my tech life is just getting better.