WOW. I just bought a new D-Link DI-624 802.11g wireless router. , my laptop is now turbocharged on the web. Muy old DI-614+ was a b standard that connected me at 11 Mbps. I'm now getting 54 Mbps and the pages are loaded instantaneously. The impetus for the change was my new TiVo box and it's TiVo to go feature, which allows you to record and then dump to your PC for editing/burning. I didn't want to be transmitting video at b speeds so I bought a g USB adapter for the TiVo box, and since my latest notebook is also g standard, and I found a good deal on the router, I thought WTF.
It goes without saying that you've enabled encryption and put a big ol' honking key on the router so you're not providing free WLAN to the entire neighborhood?
It amazes me how many people just plug their routers in and never bother to turn on encryption ...
Cubes - Oh Yeah, even my old one was encrypted with a huge key. In addition, I don't broadcast my SSID, so you'd have to guess that before you even started a crack. I picked that one up from my bro-in-law over X-Mas.
There are 4 other wireless routers within reach of my house. Two of them are wide open, and two are secured but still broadcasting their SSIDs.
Damn- should I be worried...what is SSIDs?
Not broadcasting your SSID is the best way to keep people out. You can also limit the MAC addresses that connect. WEP is actually fairly weak.
(as I post this on our neighbors connection)
All in all I'm not against sharing wireless networks. Our homenetwork isn't TCIP so there is no access to our computers even though we're both on neighbors WLANS.
Funny this came up, a close friend of mine wors in the telecom industry and was at a training class in Dallas where some former government intel types who work for his company were giving training on security issues. One guy was talking about woreless security, an with a program he downloaded from the internet, identified over 20 connections from the hotel conference room they were in and in about 5 seconds of running the program, cracked each and all of the connections. Spooky stuff.
hey Manny- did you take care of that when you worked on my PC/router?
Yeah, I took off your SSID broadcast and limited MAC connections.
Yeah, WEP is pretty weak.
Yes!!
Thanks!
hmmm
maybe i should upgrade then....
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