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10591
January 9th, 2005 17:00
Wireless Network Security
I have my wireless network setup and working, however, on the "Available networks" screen, it says my network is unsecured, as I can also see a neighbor's network and it has a little lock and says it is secured, along with another neighbor's network that says it is unsecured and I could actually connect to it. How do I go about securing my wireless network?
I have a dell and another computer. They both have windows XP with the wirewall on. I have a Linksys router and a Linksys PC card in the second computer. Let me know what other information you need to help me.
Thanks.
NemesisDB
2 Intern
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7.9K Posts
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January 10th, 2005 00:00
you can take a number of steps. the following list starts with safe things and progresses to things that are more likely to cause a loss of connectivity. at minimum i feel you should enable MAC filtering and I strongly recommend you compliment that with some form of encyption.
1) enable MAC filtering on the router: this will prevent other addresses from connecting -- you will need to enter in the MAC addresses of all the machines on your network. this is easy to do, just try not to lock yourself out of the router by entering your first address incorrectly. this security method can be broken if someone is smart and has some time to kill.
2) reduce broadcast power -- some router's support this, some don't. if yours does, you can try turning down the power to the miminal amount needed to cover the locations you need to cover (trial and error on your part). this can be 'broken' if someone has a decent antenna with them.
3). enable encyption -- you will need to enable something that both your router, and all your wireless clients support. This may be WEP 128 or it maybe the newer and more secure WPA. This will create extra network overhead and may degrade internal performance. Ensure that the authentication method is set to open if you use WEP. WEP can be broken if someone is smart and has a bit of time, WPA is significantly more difficult.
4) Turn off SSID broadcast. This can create problems if you're like me and like to have windows control your wireless clients. It'll keep the dumb people (read neighbors) out...
Post back questions on doing any of the above
NemesisDB
2 Intern
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7.9K Posts
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January 10th, 2005 22:00
so is it working with WPA now?
also, you can find the MAC address is a number of ways. the easiest is to click start, click run, type cmd, hit enter ... from there type: ipconfig /all and then hit enter. MAC address is the physical address
kgwright
72 Posts
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January 10th, 2005 22:00
Thanks for the info. I actually did get it set up using WPA Pre-shared key with TKIP WPA algorithms and a WPA shared key. Then it showed as secured on my "View Wireless Networks." However, then I could not connect to the internet on my main computer, nor was the other computer able to. I kept trying to repair the connection through Windows XP and it said that it could not locate an IP address. So I scraped that for now. Though when I shut down my main computer for a while and then brought it back up, I could connect. So I'm not sure what made it work again.
So how do I find my MAC addresses for each PC?