On a conventional wired network, physical security is a given: If someone plugs a computer into your hub, you'll know about it immediately, and you can trace the physical wire back to the intruders computer. On wireless networks, however, anyone who comes into range of your wireless access point can tap into your network and intercept signals from it.
You can optimize Vista all you want, possibly shaving 15 or 20 seconds off your boot time, or you can approach the problem from a different angle.
A wireless (Wi-Fi) network is, as its name suggests, a network that does away with cabling and uses radio frequencies to communicate. It's more common for notebooks and handheld computers to use wireless connections, but some desktop computers also do. Indeed, it's increasingly the case that many workplaces are switching to wireless networking, eschewing old-fashioned, cable-based networking.
NdisWrapper is effectively an open-source driver (technically described as a kernel module) that allows Linux to use standard Windows XP drivers for wireless network devices. You might describe NdisWrapper as being a translation layer between the Linux kernel andthe Windows drivers, which can be installed using NdisWrapper's configuration tools.
Some wireless networks are protected using either the Wired Equivalency Privacy (WEP) or Wi-Fi
Protected Access (WPA) systems. WPA is effectively an updated version of WEP and offers stronger protection. There are actually two versions of WPA: WPA and WPA2. WPA2 is newer and corrected several security flaws in WPA. Both work in roughly the same way.