Securing Wireless Network.

[Livy]

i just got a wireless network setup yesterday, and was needing some help on securing it as best possible,
the router is an origo 1810 ive update to latest firmware, enabled mac access control, enabled wep and gave same key to all computers, disabled iapp? disabled broadcasting of the ssid. is there anything else i could do to secure it better?

[Storm]

if you can turn signal strength up and down, turn it down as far as possible for you to still have a good signal....... that way people from outside will have a harder time hacking into the siganl

[Livy]

i cant do that, but i can change the data rate, its wireless b stuff, so if i change it to only 11mps second, then that should work kinda the same shouldnt it?

edit: also what about 802.1x Authentication

[Storm]

im not sure on this, but the 802.1x authentication is only to make sure its WiFi certified, so that would only slow your network down.

and i wasnt talking about slowing the network down (going back to wifi B ), but turning the signal strenght down, thus it will be harder to listen into the signal (for your computers as well), and wont reach as far (so people that are outside will have a harder time finding a hotspot

[Livy]

i was thinking that making the speed only 11mps instead of auto, it will only be able to connect if the signal is strogn enough, making it harder.???

since the further away you are the slower the machine connects, e.g in the garden it goes to 5.5mps

[lynx]

It sounds to me like you've already done everything reasonable. Someone would would have to be really determined to get past the security features you've already installed.

If you make sure everything only runs on 802.11b then you could try using authentication (which sort of double checks that everything really is 802.11x) but it won't secure your network from 802.11b snoopers. It is supposed to be useful if there is a nearby network which isn't running 802.11b, but I've had problems with it turned on and quite frankly I don't think it is worth the effort.

I think there is also something you could do with sub-channels, by default I believe they all use the same ones but you can change this. Unfortunately I don't know enough about this to give you good advice.

I'd be interested to know what you think of it once you've had chance to evaluate it properly. I haven't any experience of that one, only the 7214 adsl modem/wireless router and the 8400 adsl modem/router, but both have been excellent once upgraded to the latest firmware (and a total pain before that).

[Livy]

seems to be running smoothly so far, using origo wireless cards in the laptops too. 3 of them. only problem so far seems to be that on emule, the kad network comes up firewalled alot, and ive set it up as i had it on both my old routers, i can get a high id on emule, its just the kad network.

[Livy]

seems ive had to disable wep protection and re-enable broadcasting to get the 3rd laptop which is running windows me to get it to connect.

[lynx]

I think I would be tempted to upgrade the OS rather than lower the security.

[Livy]

it isnt my computer though, thats the thing, its my flatmates laptop.

and its pretty slow i think, i'm gonna look into windows 2000 for it maybe,
is its wireless capabilities any better?

[Spicker]

people in my area are too dumb to steal wireless internt... they dont even know wt a router is :lol: :01:

[lynx]

Originally posted by Livy@7 July 2004 - 19:45
it isnt my computer though, thats the thing, its my flatmates laptop.

and its pretty slow i think, i'm gonna look into windows 2000 for it maybe,
is its wireless capabilities any better?
AFAIK wireless for W2K is as good as XP.

I'm no expert on it though, and I suspect the config utilities may be a bit more primitive but you should be able to get the same end results.

[Livy]

win2k seems the way to go them, i seen him about upgrading to 2000, and seems ok with it, was worried about losing data, so im going to partition his drive into 2 aswell.

if i can get win2k drivers for it though.

[Livy]

also, has anyone else who's went wireless had problems with emule since then, i can never seem to get a file dowloaded. keeps coming up corrupted.

[tesco]

Open some ports.

[Livy]

i have, ive opened the default ports which it is running on,
may try non-default see if that helps.