Wireless Security
After Elli purchased a nice laptop, I became much more aware of the sheer number of insecure wireless networks out there. Like while we were down in GA, the neighboring house had an insecure network as did the family we stayed with.
At the Artists’ Attic I noticed 5 wireless networks, 3 of which were insecure and would allow anyone to connect.
So today I took the laptop and checked what kinda range I was getting from our wireless router, turns out we get easily 400′ radius of the router. With this in mind I decided to jump from WPA PSK to WPA2-PSK security, turned off my SSID broadcasting, changed the SSID, and the Pass Key. I should be safe from bandwidth theft or theft of service now.
I really love the DD-WRT firmware, I set the transmit power of the router to 71mW and get wonderful reception in the whole area.
A techie friend of mine has an unsecured network by choice. Her computers themselves are well-protected from outside tampering, and she’s perfectly happy to let people access the network all they want.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pmThat is quite generous of her 🙂
I have four pc’s on our home network and finite bandwidth (500kbps download / 120kbps upload). If someone for example did connect up and started streaming or doing peer2peer they could easily sap all our bandwidth.
Another concern I would have is if someone was using my bandwith for illegal means such as spamming or posting child pornography on the net etc, in which case the feds would be knocking on my door.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm