is this illegal...and if not...

[camaro1185]

first let me say that i know very little about networking, and that at home we have dial up on one computer and it uses our primary phone line that all our phones are hooked up to. My queston is this, when i come home from college my laptop which has a wireless card in it picks up an unsecure wireless signal that i connect to and it has internet but no sharing of files......first is that illegeal. my second question is that if i wanted to set up my house and the 5 computers that we have (2 laptops....4 desktops...some new some old) to a wireless network that we could share a printer, music, videos and the internet that i stumbled on, is this possible. i know that i will probably need a access point and wireless network cards....but how would i go about hooking up the server and getting the rest of the computers on the network. and if u could explain to me what exactly is the difference between an access point and a router that would be great. any and all the help that you could give me and any links to sites that would help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[timothyb89]

Well, if the network you are connecting to is neighborhoodnode or somthing like that, it is probably a network that is free for your neighborhood. If it is somthing else, it is probably some poor person that didn't set up their WEP key. If you want to set up your own network, you need a router, like a Linksys Wireless G (WRT54G is the model number) and for internet, you may wany to get Cable or DSL. To set up file sharing, (on Windows) you right click a folder you want to share, go to properties, then click the sharing tab and "Shae this folder". If works the same with printers. To access the files on another computer, type in it's IP address in a run window (Start>Run) (for Linksys router, it should be 192.168.1.something ). To find out what a computer's IP is, open a DOS prompt, type in ipconfig and it should be the first-ish one there. When you type in the IP, a window should appear (the format in the Run window should be \\192.168.1.XX) with all the file that are shared on the computer. Put music in a shared folder for all the computer on the net work to access. Just so you know, this is not all you need to do. You can search Google or something to find more.