who's using your internet connection?

[Bender]

I've been losing my internet connection constantly for the last few days. This is happening on my XP desktop that is cabled to the router as well as my laptop that is wireless.
Also, the browsing speed seems to have slowed considerably. Sometimes it is like I am back on dial-up (I have RoadRunner).

I am looking at my netgear router page right now, and I see how to view current connections, but what about viewing wireless connections? I wonder if my neighbors are mooching. (I do have a connection p/w set up (128 bit).
The current connections shown are my cabled desktop, and my son's cabled desktop. the other computers in the house are wireless.

do I need a new router? I was hoping I could view who is "using" the router at any time (wireless or wired).

thanks (I don't know crap about this stuff)

[ChumpDumper]

There should be a wireless tab somewhere to show those connections.

Make sure you are using WPA encryption with a complicated passkey. Use a MAC filter too and you'll be doing about all you can. It's pretty easy to set up both.

[Bender]

ok, let me check that...

I have WEP 128 set up. It looks like the only choice for Security encryption is WEP. (64 or 128)

under Maintenance there are the following choices: Router status, Attached devices, Backup settings, Set password, Router upgrade.

the attached devices only shows the 2 cabled computers. I don't see anywhere to view wireless connections.

There is a Log I can view that shows sites visited and the IP address of the requesting source.

Is the preponderance (?) of dropped connections happening lately a sign of needing a new router? Also it is getting like I have dial-up, as I mentioned.

[baseline bum]

ok, let me check that...

I have WEP 128 set up. It looks like the only choice for Security encryption is WEP. (64 or 128)

under Maintenance there are the following choices: Router status, Attached devices, Backup settings, Set password, Router upgrade.

the attached devices only shows the 2 cabled computers. I don't see anywhere to view wireless connections.

There is a Log I can view that shows sites visited and the IP address of the requesting source.

Is the preponderance (?) of dropped connections happening lately a sign of needing a new router? Also it is getting like I have dial-up, as I mentioned.

WEP is easily cracked by someone who knows what he is doing, and the attack can be done passively (i.e., without injecting anything in the network; just listening to it). If you and your family do a lot of downloading, it can easily be cracked by a day or two of packet sniffing. Use WPA with a random password; even if you know what you're doing, you're not going to have much luck cracking it in a couple of days, weeks, or months even.

Also, one technique for (quickly) doing an attack to steal a WEP key is to keep booting everyone connected so they have to send packets out to the access point to reconnect.

I'd buy a wireless router that can use WPA if I was worried about people using my bandwidth or sniffing the traffic.

[Heath Ledger]

Although it is possible to crack WEP it is unlikely. The average person is not going to invest the time to learn how to do so.

[Heath Ledger]

Before your replace your router, run your cable directly from your modem to your desktop to see if this alleviates your problems.

I have had road runner off and on for many years and cant tell you how many times Ive had similar problems as you and it turned out to be mostly network congestion, this week especially surfing has spiked because of Michael Jacksons death and the downloading of all of his music.

[Bender]

ok, thanks. Guess I'll buy another router. Now that I know more about them, I know what to ask about. I'll check timvp's router recommendation thread for ideas.

Yeah, I was wondering if it might be RR itself. The main problem I've been having is when using soulseek (not for MJ !!)

edit: haven't tried the direct modem-computer connection yet as Heath suggested (have done that in the past when having problems).
Last night (sunday) it actually didn't drop connections like the night before. Still slow however. Is RR one of the companies that slows down people if they are doing p2p stuff...?

[to21]

Do you have your SSID broadcasting?

[Bender]

yes. Do I need to set it to No?

Edit: ok, I just googled it and saw that it was recommended to set it to NO, so I did.

Edit again: now none of our wireless computers connect to internet. When you display Connections, they show "Unsecured network" plus some of my neighbors networks that were there before.

also, when I go to router setup again, from this wired computer, there are no wireless settings displayed to change. So now we have no wireless internet??

this shit pisses me off

[Bender]

got it working again. put it back to "Broadcast SSID"

now all wireless machines in the house connect again.

if you don't broadcast ssid, how can your wireless machines recognize the wireless network?

I hate messing with this stuff. I told my son to hurry up and learn all this networking stuff, so he could start helping me (he's 11 but learning fast).

[sabar]

WEP is very easily broken by downloadable tools for anyone that wants some free Internets. All you do is sniff packets for a while, come back in an hour and tell the thing to find the key. 30 seconds later and they got your password. Doesn't take any knowledge to do it.

SSID broadcasting has nothing to do with connecting to the network, it's just an advertisement. It's just like how people can send you mail without you advertising your address. Hiding your SSID does almost nothing for security anyways as anyone sniffing the air will see people connecting and grab the SSID that way.

You can either buy a router with WPA or install some packet sniffing stuff on the laptop with the wireless card to see if people are connecting. If you wanna mess around sniffing theres KisMAC for Macs and Netstumbler/Wireshark for Windows.

Your router seems pretty low on features and I would replace it anyways (no MAC filtering?)

[Borosai]

Like sabar said, a new router wouldn't be a bad idea. Take a look at my recommendation from this other thread (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3445982&postcount=6) for a nice, inexpensive option (if you don't require N or gigabit).

[Bender]

our router seems pretty low on features and I would replace it anyways (no MAC filtering?)
I'm not sure if it has mac filtering or not. will check later.

Yeah, it's an inexpensive old Netgear.

what about my question about not broadcasting SSID? When I broadcast, my wireless laptop shows my SSID, and several others nearby when I select Connect To in Vista...

when I unchecked Broadcast SSID, my laptop did not connect to the internet automatically anymore, and when I selected Connect To, the only choices were other networks in the neighborhood... mine was no longer listed.

I am positively buying another router. Will review the Router Recommendations thread.

[baseline bum]

WEP is very easily broken by downloadable tools for anyone that wants some free Internets. All you do is sniff packets for a while, come back in an hour and tell the thing to find the key. 30 seconds later and they got your password. Doesn't take any knowledge to do it.


A passive attack in an hour? That seems way too quick unless the network you're attacking is transmitting / receiving at a very high rate.

[Heath Ledger]

Its very unlikely his network has been hacked.

[Bender]

my main complaints are that sometimes when myself and others in my house are browsing the web, we just lose connectivity... Sometimes we close the browser, and get back in later and it works again. Sometimes we Restart to make it work again.

Besides that, our connection seems very slow. I've been on the web since 9600 dial-up. Sometimes my RR seems like back when I had 28.8 or 56K dial-up. Pages might take up to a minute or 2 to load completely, just sometimes though, not all the time...

[leemajors]

A passive attack in an hour? That seems way too quick unless the network you're attacking is transmitting / receiving at a very high rate.

http://lifehacker.com/5305094/how-to-crack-a-wi+fi-networks-wep-password-with-backtrack

[Bender]

will d/l FF 3.5 tonight, maybe that will help speed me up a little in the meantime.

[stretch]

try to connect directly to their computer and send them all that gay porn you downloaded

[baseline bum]

http://lifehacker.com/5305094/how-to-crack-a-wi+fi-networks-wep-password-with-backtrack

That's still an active attack though; not just packet-sniffing like sabar said.

[sabar]

I meant sniffing while replaying packets. Passively can take a good chunk of time depending on network traffic (hours to days). Either way, there are plenty of script-kiddie tools out there to break WEP and more people steal that bandwidth than are reported. I myself had WEP running for a bit over a year and when I checked out my router there were 20-30 MACs that had accessed my wireless and didn't belong to any hardware in my house. I set-up MAC filtering and never an outside connection since.

By the way it is important to plug straight into the wall during a time of bad connectivity to see if your ISP is at fault. I could write books about the problems Time Warner Cable had with their broadband a few years ago; seemingly random connection issues that causes me to change to AT&T.

[Bender]

I have something called Setup Wireless Card Access List, and within that selection, there is Turn Access Control On.

I should probably enter the allowed MAC addresses of the wireless machines in the house. Is this what you meant by "MAC filtering"?