Change Your Wallpaper To Secure WiFi Network

Are you concerned about the safety of your wifi network? You think someone outside of your house may gain access to your wifi network and thus may hack in to your computer? Your fear is not invalid considering the increasing news of wireless network hacking. So what can you do to secure wifi network? A layman’s answer would be to keep the wifi signals in your home only to avoid the leakage of signal into the neighbourhood. And the layman is quite right in his thinking.

French researchers have developed this revolutionary wallpaper (for actual walls, not the digital one for your desktop) that prevents wi-fi signals from going outside the room/home and thus keeps the signals in the confines of the room and prevents from any outside intrusion. More details can be found on the French website L’Informaticien.

Special Wallpapers to keep home wifi secure

Innovative thinking. Makes me wonder if it prevents me from opening my windows and doors 😛 Do you think it will help in a secure wifi network?

Tips to Increase the Wi-Fi Signal on iPod Touch

Enjoying your iPod Touch and its facilities to its fullest can only be possible if you have a good connection with good connectivity, that is, proper Wi-Fi signals. A fast and stable connection is mostly needed for streaming High Definition content on your iPod. Many consumers face the problem of receiving low signal quality at their iPods. Given below are some of the many ways you can improve signal reception on your iPod Touch. [Read more…]

How to find the saved Wireless passwords in Windows 7

Ever found yourself in a situation when you need to provide someone or yourself the WEP, WPA, WPA2-PSK password of the wifi network you are using or have used it previously and you are left wondering: “How do I find the wireless password saved in Windows?“. By default Windows saves the wireless password when you choose “connect automatically”. All these keys along with the wireless network settings are stored in Windows. If in a case you need to see the passwords specific to a network, you can fetch it back from Windows in following simple steps. [Read more…]

How to solve: No Wireless Network Detected in Ubuntu 11.10

One of the most common problem one faces after a fresh install of Ubuntu is the loss of Wireless Network. And believe me that is the biggest pain for a normal user. The problem double-folds if the wireless adapter is broadcom (do not know what is your wireless adapter? click here). Some of the general problems are showing no wireless adapter, showing wireless adapter but detecting no wireless networks etc. [Read more…]

How to solve: No wireless networks in Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10 and 11.04

Problem:

Recently I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (wireless was working while installing) on my Dell Inspiron N4010 which uses Broadcom Wireless Adapter (How to know which network adapter you are using?). Wireless networks were even available when I used it for the first time after installing. Then there were message from Ubuntu that restricted drivers are available for Broadcom STA (BCM4311) (why did it ask me to download the wireless drivers when wireless was working on the first hand..??). Any ways, I said, why not? I clicked on the activate button. It installed the driver and asked me to restart the computer. I restarted it and there you go. Wireless is on. But it detects no networks. I know there are wireless networks but Ubuntu is not detecting any wireless networks.

Reason:

The reason what I think is some compatibility issues (it’s probably a bug in 11.04) with this version of Ubuntu and the restricted driver because same driver was working quite well in previous versions of Ubuntu.

Solution:

Here is what you need to do. Use other Broadcom drivers. Download these drivers (from Windows or through wired network or a friend’s computer or from wherever you are reading this article :) ).

For 32 bit: http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.+bdcom-0ubuntu5_i386.deb

For 64 bit: http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.+bdcom-0ubuntu5_amd64.deb

(Don’t know which Ubuntu you are using? Click here: Check you Ubuntu architecture)

Now remove the previous drivers in Ubuntu 11.04 by using: sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source

Now install the appropriate driver (you have downloaded from the above links). Restart your computer. If restarting doesn’t work try shut down and then start it (strange…but works). Enjoy :)

Alternate Solution 1:

If you could connect through a wired network, this solution might work for you. (If not then check here). The problem is with STA drivers so better to deactivate/uninstall it.

Alternate Solution 2:

People who cannot solve the problem with the above specified method may want to try this one. Here you go:

  • open the ‘Synaptic Package Manager‘ (if you are using Ubuntu 11.10 then install it first from the software cemter) and search for ‘bcm’
  • uninstall the ‘bcm-kernel-source‘ package
  • make sure that the ‘firmware-b43-installer‘ and the ‘b43-fwcutter‘ packages are installed
  • type into terminal:

    cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | egrep '8180|acx|at76|ath|b43|bcm|CX|eth|ipw|irmware|isl|lbtf|orinoco|ndiswrapper|NPE|p54|prism|rtl|rt2|rt3|rt6|rt7|witch|wl' 

    (you may want to copy this till the end if it is not visible properly) and see if the term ‘blacklist bcm43xx‘ is there

  • if it is, then type cd /etc/modprobe.d/ and then sudo gedit blacklist.conf put a # in front of the line: blacklist bcm43xx then save the file (I was getting error messages in the terminal about not being able to save, but it actually did save properly).
  • reboot
Hopefully this works for you all!
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Sources: ubuntuforums, askubuntu