Wireless options and questions

Ok, you have a bunch of questions so my apologies in advance if I miss some of them.

1) Connectivity:  I'm not sure what's causing your drops.  If you have windows XP, please upgrade to Service Pack 2 as wireless reliability is greatly improved.  Short of hard-powering down everything you might try simply double clicking your network connection and clicking repair.  The next time you lose internet connectivity, see if you can still access the router's web configuration page (type the router's IP address into IE).  If you can then the problem is likely between your router and your service provider.  If you can't then it's a problem between your router and your client.  Post back your results and we'll troubleshoot more.  If you can connect to the router you may be able to perform a soft reset from its configuration page.  Lastly, please ensure that the router and card have the latest firmware/drivers installed.

2) Speed:  This is a little more tricky.  Your broadband connection is probably a max of 3mbps downstream to you.  Your current wireless bandwidth seems more than adequate for this (even shared between all your wireless clients).  The "super"G products you list are expensive and I would not recommend them unless you are doing lots of file transfers or streaming between different clients on your network (computer to computer).  If you do go for such a product, please make sure all wireless products on your network are compatibile.  If you're running a wireless 802.11g network now, try to ensure all devices are 802.11g and disable support for 802.11b (if possible) in the router's setup page.

3) X-Box:  If I understand you correctly you simply want to place your X-Box on your network so that you can play others online.  For this you will need an ethernet to wireless bridge, which is basically what you have links to.  Again, I don't suggest the super-expensive ones as your internet connection is nowhere near that fast.  The only reason to hookup something that will only use the internet to something in that speed category is maintain overall network performance by having everything (for instance) on d-link's superG standard.  If you're running a standard 802.11g network now, just buy a wireless 802.11g bridge. 

4) Security: Yes, your neighbors may be able to connect to you.  Yes, enabling encryption will degrade performance.  That said, you seem to have a decent amount of free bandwidth, so enable encyption and see how it goes.  Use WPA if everything supports it.  If not, use 128 WEP.  You should also enable MAC filtering on the router.

Security:

Adding abit more on security which is suppose to be your prime concern, since your neighbours are leeching into your network, i am using a super G dlink i624 (i think) router by the way. To get rid of them, the best way is to apply Mac Filter. Rumour and hacking forums has it that the WEP 128 Encrypt key can easily be breached. Whereas, MacFilter is a unique key which only your computer has for example it goes like CF-01-02-56-98-JK. Which technically saying is unbreachable, unless of course there's a mole in your house.

To excess the require  mac address for your own computer, do the following.

1. Go to "run" on your start button

2. type "CMD" and press enter

3. At this point you should be in dos (command prompt)

4. than type "ipconfig /all"

5. You will see your ip adress, but the most important one is your Mac Address which should be 12 letters. ---> XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX copy it down.

You can get your mac address here, now how your settings in your router runs i have no idea. From there on its up to you. Another problem you should note with mac address, once you apply it. All your computers, laptops, whatever that is connected to the router must have its Mac Address recorded in the Mac Filter. Otherwise computers which are not recorded will be locked out. IT's like a club, where you only can get in if your on the invited list.

MAC filtering and WEP provide completely different  types of security.  MAC filtering will prevent any computer whose MAC address is not registered on the router from using the network.  WEP encryption (or the more secure WPA encryption) will prevent anyone from intercepting the transmissions as they pass through the airwaves.  Please try to provide more accurate information.

Steve

Change the default username and password on the router.  Change the network name (SSID) of the router.  Don't broadcast the SSID.  Use MAC address filtering.  Use WPA encryption.  Use complex passwords and encryption keys.

Steve

No wireless network can be made 100% secure.  Sure, both WEP and WPA can be cracked.  MAC addresses can be spoofed.  The best defense is to have multiple layers of security.  Make the hackers work to break into your network.  There are so many unsercure networks out there (just come to my neighborhood, for example), that hacker are more likely to go after the easy ones before taking the time to break through multiple layers of security.  The same is true for your house and your care.  Neither can be made 100% secure from break ins, but you can make it harder.

Steve

i need to know the model of your wireless router, so i can have some idea and also what class its running on.

Dropping out problems:

SP2 won't help much rather gives you more problem apparently, there is a fix on the net somewhere i forgot for this bug. Cause all of this happen quite sometime ago, and i am using wired connection to my router.

Okay here's what happened, i use to have a network shared between 10 people. 4 wired and 6 wireless, and the connection was raising alot of problems. First of all internet drops in and out every 5 minutes, it was obvious from the messenger connection (signning in and out). Than slow connection, poor frequency, and inability to connect at times. That was a linksys wireless router until i dumped it for a Dlink 624.

The problems most forums besides this suggested that:

1. A wireless router doesn't do all the job for you certain settings you have to adjust manually, the distribution system of a router and a hub is different. I've forgotten which is which. I'm not a computer whizz but i am just tellin from experience.

2. incompatibility, if you hook too many things in it example wired and wireless like what i did. What i;ve experience is, the wired connection get a slightly better connection while the wireless get nothin can't even connect to internet.

Well i can;t figure out anything else at the moment but i will post along the way

Message Edited by TheSeaOfLostSouls on 01-16-2005 03:37 AM