Chapter 7

The first part of Chapter 7 of The Internet goes into detail about the history of mobile networks established in the United States. The speed at which these networks were installed and evolved is honestly extremely impressive. I have been a cell phone owner for approximately 18 years, so I have seen firsthand the evolution from 2G networks to 5G networks, which my current phone, the Samsung S23, runs today. Over the course of the chapter, the book also dives into Bluetooth and its uses, something I am also very familiar with. I will say that I had no idea Bluetooth was named after a 10th-century Danish king, nor did I know that a group of Bluetooth devices is called a piconet. Most of the first section covered topics I already knew about, including wired, wireless, and cellular networks.
The second half of the chapter goes into detail about the importance of securing not only your wireless network but also each of your individual wireless devices. Most of the security examples presented at the beginning of this section were familiar to me, since I have been configuring my own wireless networks and routers for over a decade. However, toward the end of the chapter, I began learning about security vulnerabilities and attacks that I previously knew nothing about. Chapter 7 started as a refresher, but it ultimately became enlightening as I discovered several smartphone security risks, I was unaware of, such as evil-twin attacks and bluejacking.

After reading this chapter, it reinforced my belief that Internet security and online etiquette should be taught in schools, especially now that so much of our lives exist online in one form or another.

<[Previous] [Appendix A] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [9] [10] [Next]