AlanBarber.Org
Saturday, July 17, 2004
New Wireless Network
Well what a wonderful day today. Apparently both the DLink DWL-1000AP Wireless Access Point and the generic 10mb network card that was connected to the WAP gave up the ghost today.
I’m really not sure what happen. It was working fine this morning when I left to go on my bike ride. However, when I got back about 2 hours later the network was down. I tried the usual things like powering down the WAP, resetting, etc. Nothing world work. I finally admitted defeat and went to staples to buy a new WAP.
I bought the Linksys Wireless-B Broadband Router (model number BEFW11S4). This is a major upgrade from that old DLink WAP. The DLink 1000AP is just a wireless hub where as the Linksys is a WAP, 4 port switch, and broadband router all in one. I’m only using the WAP and switch features.
The network is setup like this:
Internet via dialup modem <-> internet sharing desktop computer <-> Linksys router
Then there’s a desktop and a laptop that have 802.11b wireless nics installed.
So that’s it for the network. I know it’s not the fancy but hey I like it. There are a few nice features of the Linksys wap that I really do like. It’s mainly the nice browser based control panel. The DLink had a browser based control panel but it sucked horrible and lacked many features.
Security wise the Linksys is a bit better. Basically, I use a four pronged prevention method. First, I change the SSID from the default. You need to know the SSID to get onto a network so if you use something original it’s harder for someone to get in. Second, I disable SSID broadcasting. This keep the WAP from announcing itself to the world. This means to connect to the network you have to know the SSID since you can just wait for the WAP to tell it to you. Third I use WEP encryption. WEP is flawed and useless but it’s at least another layer to make it harder to get into the network. Forth and final, I use MAC address filtering. I tell the WAP to only let my two wireless cards on the network and to ignore any others. Again MAC spoofing is really easy but it’s another layer of protection.
These 4 things make the network more secure than if you just left everything out in the open. Of course I live out in the country so location alone makes me pretty secure. I highly doubt there are that many people, if any, that are going to go war driving around here. This is rural so hackers aren’t going to waste their time out here. They know 1) 90% of the population is old farmers that don’t have computers 2) any that do probably have macs or old compaqs and no wireless networks and 3) there’s no broadband out here so if they do find an open network they won’t be able to steal bandwidth to download illegal software, music, etc.
on 07/17/2004 at 07:13 PM