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Degrees of Wireless Security
Authored by: mclbruce on Nov 21, '02 01:03:00PM

If you leave your front door unlocked, your house is less secure than if you lock it. Even if you have a crummy lock, using it will give you more security than not using it.

I know someone who moved to an apartment in San Francisco, fired up her Powerbook and was on the Internet via Airport. She just turned on Airport and there it was. She still doesn't know which of her neighbors is giving her free Internet access. Any kind of security would keep her out of the network.

When I set up a wireless system I change the name of the network, enable 40 bit WEP and disable broadcasting the network name. This at least keeps the honest people honest with little performance penalty for the user.

To break into a wireless network takes a certain level of hardware, software, expertise, and time. The required amounts vary depending on how you set up your wireless network.

Most of the Internet Routers out there run on UNIX or LINUX. I hope that better security will be added via firmware updates.



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Degrees of Wireless Security
Authored by: mule on Nov 21, '02 04:05:25PM

When I wrote, that I wanted to protect my network, I was reffering to the casual WarDriver. I simply dislike others using my bandwidth and in the house I live, that would be fairly easy. The MR314 also supports MAC based filtering and I do use that as well. As for the performance penalty. I do no transfer large files via 802.11b. It would be pretty sarcastic to do, since my Powerbook come with a gigbait capable ethernet interface and the router is at least capable of doing 100Mbit. The performace penalty is therefore a non issue for me.



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