Recently I worked with a local client who had a relatively new wireless router that had a “guest” network feature. It’s a bit like having two wireless routers in one, because it could offer two independent SSID’s (Service Set ID, the “name” of a particular wireless network). Why would you want to do this? Imagine having two rooms, an “inside” room with all your valuables in it, and an “outside” room that only has the bare minimums. You would probably only let trusted individuals like family and maybe close friends into the room with the valuables. Someone you don’t know well would be ushered into the “guest” room with only the bare essentials. That’s how the guest network works: it allows internet access, but keeps the guest separate from your important stuff.
It would be possible with this particular router to set the “inside” wireless network to use the normal WPA (Wireless Protected Access) security measures, while setting the “guest” network to be unsecured. This would certainly make it easy for guests in your home or business to access the internet — they could just connect without bothering to put in the WPA password.
Even though they’re kept separate from your “inside” network, it’s still not a good idea to run the “guest” network without security being set. The challenge, as I’ve written about in the past, is that you can have neighbors or drive-by hackers using your network to do nasty things on the internet using your resources, and looking to the authorities as if you’re the one doing it. There was an article recently (http://wifinetnews.com/archives/2011/04/false_kid_porno_raid_gets_media_play.html – click the link in the first paragraph which is a link to the original AP article) describing an arrest made by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) where the person they arrested was guilty only of leaving their wireless network unsecured. It isn’t a crime to leave your wireless unsecured, but it sure leaves you open to abuse by ICE, FBI, or other don’t-let-civil-rights-get-in-the-way-of-crime-fighting organizations. The person in question had gotten frustrated with setting the security on his new wireless router, and almost instantly became victim to his 20-something neighbor’s taste for child pornography.
My point of view isn’t so much that I want to avoid false arrest; I just don’t want to enable spammers, pornographers and other morally disabled people by giving them free access to the internet.
There was a time when wireless routers were unsecured out-of-the-box. It seems that the manufacturers have wised up to this being a problem, and many are now shipping wireless routers with security enabled, and in many cases with tools to make it easy to add new computers and other wireless devices.
Interestingly, when I was working with the aforementioned client with the “guest” network router, I had the toughest time understanding why his laptop couldn’t “see” his other computer on the network. I finally realized that he’d set his laptop to connect to the “guest” network instead of the “inside” network, effectively blocking network traffic between the two.