Wireless started out as a way of sending audio programs through the air. Now it's hip to be wireless once again thanks to the Internet. By 2007, approximately half of all the world's Internet users were expected to be using some kind of wireless access-- many of them in developing countries where traditional wired forms of access, based on telephone networks, are not available.

If all the wireless connections in the world were instantly replaced by cables, imagine for a moment. You 'd have cables stretching through the air from every radio in every home hundreds of miles back to the transmitters. You 'd have wires reaching from every cellphone to every phone mast. Radio-controlled cars would disappear too, replaced by yet more cables. You couldn't step out of the door without tripping over cables. You couldn't fly a plane through the sky without getting tangled up. If you peered through your window, you 'd see nothing at all but a cats-cradle of wires. That, then, is the brilliance of wireless: it does away with all those cables, leaving our lives simple, uncluttered, and free! Let's take a closer look at how it works.

You probably have a little box called a router that plugs into your telephone socket if you have wireless Internet access at home. This kind of router is a bit like a sophisticated modem: it's a standalone computer whose job is to relay connections to and from the Internet. At home, you might use a router to connect several computers to the Internet at once (saving on the need for several separate modems). In other words, the router does two jobs: it creates a wireless computer network, linking all your computers together, and it also gives all your machines a shared gateway to the Internet.

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Radio stations use gigantic transmitters, and that's why we can pick up radio signals from thousands of miles away on the opposite side of Earth. Wireless Internet is simply a way of using radio waves to receive and send Internet data instead of radio sounds or TV pictures. Unlike radio and TV, it is typically used to send signals only over relatively short distances with low-power transmitters.

Pie charts showing the vast growth in mobile phone and Internet access between 2000 and 2010

If you don't have an ADSL connection, but have a cable broadband connection, then don't buy an ADSL wireless router. You want one that you can plug your modem in to. Look for any wireless router that DOES N'T have the words ADSL in the title.

This newer standard offers faster and more reliable wireless signals. You have been able to get Draft N routers for some time now. The ratification of the treaty by manufacturers means that a wireless adaptor bought from one company should work with another's routers, and vice versa.

Another bit of jargon you'll see is MIMO. This stands for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output. Which does, of course, tell you nothing! But MIMO is a technology aimed at giving you a better range for your wireless signals, and can carry more data in those signals (throughput). But you need a wireless adaptor that supports the MIMO technology, if you buy a wireless router with the words MIMO on it.

Another thing you may need to do in the config pages is to set up wireless security. Anyone within range of your wireless router will be able to connect to it if you don't have security switched on. There are two forms of security that most wireless routers use, WEP and WPA. What you are doing here is encrypting your signals with a key. With wireless security turned on, the router needs your key before it will allow any traffic through it. No key means no access.

You can't just plug this in to your shiny new wireless router and expect it to work! When you plug your Ethernet cable in to your computer, you're plugging it in to an ethernet card. Your new router will have a different MAC address.

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If you have a 3G connection, look out for MiFi. This is a way to share computers using a 3G connection, rather than a fixed line ADSL connection, or cable broadband. With a MiFi router you insert your SIM card into, and this connects to the internet, rather than your USB dongle. The router should then let you connect several computers to the Internet at once using wireless, ethernet, or both.

In effect, the router becomes an informal access point for the Internet, creating an invisible "cloud" of wireless connectivity all around it, known as a hotspot. Just as computers connected to a wired LAN use Ethernet, machines on a wireless LAN use the wireless equivalent, which is called Wi-Fi (or, more technically, IEEE 802.11). Wireless Internet is improving all the time, so better forms of Wi-Fi are constantly evolving.

The first step is usually to set up your router with a direct cable connection. (Called an Ethernet or Network cable. This is usually supplied with the router). The wizard should then take you through a few steps to get you connected to the router, and on to the Internet. Before you do this, you should contact your ISP and get any router setting they may have. You'll also need your broadband username and password.

Just as computers connected to a wired LAN use Ethernet, machines on a wireless LAN use the wireless equivalent, which is called Wi-Fi (or, more technically, IEEE 802.11). The hotspots you find in airports, coffee bars, bookshops, and college campuses use one or more wireless routers to create wireless Net access over a large area. You need a wireless adaptor that supports the MIMO technology, if you buy a wireless router with the words MIMO on it.

A wireless router is simply a router that connects to your computer (or computers) using radio waves instead of cables. The router can receive and send Internet data to any computer in your home that is also equipped with wireless access (so each computer on the wireless network has to have a radio transmitter and receiver in it too).

Once you have a wired connection set up, you can then set up a wireless connection. You can then unplug the Network cable when you have your wireless connection up and running.

Wi-Fi is where the expression Wi-Fi hotspot comes from. A Wi-Fi hotspot is simply a public place where you can connect your computer wirelessly to the Internet. The hotspots you find in airports, coffee bars, bookshops, and college campuses use one or more wireless routers to create wireless Net access over a large area. The University of Twente in the Netherlands has one of the world's biggest hotspots. Using 650 separate access points, it has created a seamless hotspot that covers the entire 140 hectare (350 acre) campus. Cities like Philadelphia have also announced ambitious plans to turn huge areas into hotspots. Wi-Fi hotspots are now popping up all over the world. By 2007, there were estimated to be around 180,000 in the United States alone. As of October 2012, the JWire directory was listing over 793,049 hotspots in 145 countries worldwide.

The good news is that there's something called MAC address spoofing. This is when the router pretends to be your ethernet card. Then the install process will take care of this for you, if you get a wireless router like the Buffalo AirStation G54 High Power. The process will be fairly painless. The bad news is that some routers expect you to do all this for yourself! The manual will then explain how to get the MAC address of your ethernet card, and how to enter this information in to the router. The wireless cable routers we've chosen on our recommended pages all have easy setup options for MAC address spoofing.

Manufacturers like Linksys are making it easier to set up wireless routers. Look for an Installation CD, or a Quick setup option. At the very least, there should be some instructions to follow along with. If you have an ADSL broadband connection, then you'll want to buy a wireless router with a ADSL modem built in. (It will say this on the box.

You can connect a router to all your different computers using ordinary network-connecting cables (for the technically minded, these are called RJ-45, Cat 5, or Ethernet cables). This creates what's called a LAN (local area network) linking the machines together. A computer network is a very orderly affair, more like an organized committee meeting, with carefully agreed rules of behavior, than a free-for-all cocktail party. The machines on the network have to be hooked up in a standard way and they communicate in a very orderly fashion. The rules that govern the network setup and the communication are based on an international standard called Ethernet (also known as IEEE 802.3).

A wireless router is simply a router that connects to your computer (or computers) using radio waves instead of cables. It contains a very low-power radio transmitter and receiver, with a maximum range of about 90 meters or 300 ft, depending on what your walls are made of and what other electrical equipment is nearby. The router can send and receive Internet data to any computer in your home that is also equipped with wireless access (so each computer on the wireless network has to have a radio transmitter and receiver in it too).

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