[ale] Putting wifi in the house

[Jeff Hubbs]

The time has come for me to get WiFi instituted at home and I need to 
understand what *should* be done as opposed to *what people typically do*. 

I have a WiFi WAP that I bought on clearance about three years ago but 
have only fooled around with once, and I also have a PCI WiFi card that 
I bought around the same time that I haven't even used.  So, I could use 
either the WAP or I could theoretically make one out of any number of 
spare machines.

What I would like to have happen is for our laptops to be able to "WiFi 
up" at home as easily as at Joe Blow's Hotspot and Cafe.  However, I 
also don't want to be trivially eavesdropped on or leeched off of (over 
the weekend, the newer laptop was finding two nearby WAPs from the 
living room and gave me the ESSID of one of them).  If those two 
concepts are not compatible, I need to know so that I can make the 
situation easily manageable.