Wireless Networking Security

[Alex_Select]

Does anyone know anyting about the security of wireless networking. I currenly have the Netgear FR-318 Firewall Router and was thinking of adding a Netgear HE-102 (http://www.netgear.com/80211a.asp) to the fray and was wondering if what I am hearing about people driving buy and stopping near your house can obtain an IP address and access your internal network? Is this only for wireless routers? Since this is a wireless access point should that make a difference? Has anyone workined with the 802.11a spec? Is it faily reliable from ranges that exceed 500 Ft? Just wondeing.

Alex.

[hroo772]

When you host the network you are broadcasting to more than just your house only. The neighbors and anybody around can easily access your network. It is much more secure to just have a wired network and forget the security risks of a wireless network. Also your are giving away your hard earned money by having it. The people stoping around your house are stealing that service from you unless you only limit the accounts you can have. That is the only way to have a little bit more secure network. Unless you have Windows 2000 you might not have the security you need.

[Alex_Select]

I do have a wired network! I am considering the wireless add-on to be able to use a couple of latpops wherever I need them. And since the wireless access point is acting like a hub to my router, won't people still have to com through my router to obtain a IP address...??? I live in suburbia, do people really drive around looking for wireless networks to hack?

[cyberskye]

There is a difference between WAPs and bridges. Two wireless machines running on a single WAP cannot share files or communicate with each other (this was true a few months ago, there may be a next generation system that can do this now)

Make sure that your system supports 128 bit WEP at the minimum - many only handle 40bit.

As more data is being handled by wireless devices, theft will become more common. Very inexpensive equipment can be used to clone cellphones. Same idea. You are not as at-risk as someone in an urban area (though I live in Alexandria and would consider DC an urban area...). The question is - what do you stand to lose and is it worth it. You could isolate the laptops from LAN resources, allowing jsut network connectivity but that may defeat your reasons for doing this.

I personally am waiting for greater speeds and a more mature technology - reliability, signal range, and security.

Have fun,

Skye

Do you select naturally?

[newimmigrant]

I have a linksys wireless cable/dsl router BEFWSR114 and am running 2 machines in all. 1 Wired and 1 wireless.

For security, use the following:

1)Set up NetBeui for file and print sharing and uncheck TCPIP for file and print sharing.

2)To prevent unauthorized access to your machine,
1) Change default password of your router from admin to something else.

3)Change your default ESSID from linksys to something else.

4) Use 128 bit encryption between the variuos machines. (see manual for how to.. its very simple).

By doing the above you are quite secure.

If you are using DHCP then you can further secure your network my limiting the number of DHCP users to the number of computers u have...
(this one i am not too sure about.. maybe someone could care to reply?)


But make sure access to your router is totally restricted.