Text 14321, 54 rader
Skriven 2006-01-03 09:11:01 av Alan Zisman (1:106/2000.0)
  Kommentar till text 14320 av JEAN PARROT (1:123/140)
Ärende: Re: WiFi mystery
========================
-=> JEAN PARROT wrote to ALAN ZISMAN <=-

  AZ> I turn off the SSID Broadcast feature, and use a non-standard SSID
 AZ> name, to make it a bit harder for random outsiders to connect.

 JP>         Broadcast feature ? This would be handy if you had a Hotspot,
 JP>    Why would an individual user want this turned on ? I do not think
 JP>    that I even have the option here, Dlink 713P.

It's standard-- and left on by default in pretty much all access points, but
may not use that name. What it does is publicly announce the SSID to the
outside world (Typically, these SSIDs are pre-set to names like LINKSYS, DLINK,
etc).

My WiFi notebook here shows, within range, two (!) other access points, both
named LINKSYS... but it doesn't show the (non-default) name of my access point,
which is sitting (connected to it) about 2 feet away... that's because I turned
off SSID Broadcast. As a result, in order to connect a WiFi-system to my access
point, I (or a hacker) need to manually enter the SSID. Since it's not one of
the commonly-used defaults, it will be harder to guess.

This is not a total security fix... presumably someone with a packet-sniffer
could analyze the traffic and discover the SSID, but it will discourage casual
freeloaders.

 AZ> I took the easy way out with the old laptop... plugged in an ethernet
 AZ> PC Card that was sitting in the drawer... I'd used it on this laptop a
 AZ> while ago, so the drivers were even still installed.

 JP>         Way to go ! Where did you get it ?

I've had this notebook (NEC Pentium-300) since 1999 or so; I had passed it onto
my daughter to use at University, until the keyboard started having bad keys.
Up at the 'cabin', I simply leave an external keyboard plugged in.

The NIC is a dual NIC/modem Xircom Realport... a nice unit with a double-thick
shell so that both ethernet and phone cables can plug right in-- no dongles or
fragile XJacks needed. (Nice as long as you don't need a second PCMCIA card,
since it leaves no room for another card)... it's been mostly unused since all
the more recent notebooks I've gotten have had networking built-in.

 AZ> Plugged into the wire, it finds the router without problem-- even
 AZ> booting up as Guest. So I can offer my guests Internet access without
 AZ> giving them the freedom to screw up the system.

 JP>         On a side note, since I setup my daughter's kids as Limited
 JP>    users, not a freezeup ! Your setup of Guest is comparable.

The downside is that I have to log-in to another account to run Windows Update,
update Zone Alarm, etc... though AVAST seems to be OK updating itself on the
limited (GUEST) account.
... Inet mail to: alan (at) zisman (dot) ca
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