Wireless Rocks!!!!!

My laptops wired LAN card has been slowly degrading to the point that I had to play with the cable constantly to be able to surf so I splurged, spent twice what I wanted to, and got a wireless LAN card (McLux and WLAN card, now I really am broke ). There were some awhile ago that were like $17 after rebate but after doing all the research I decited that I needed a Oronogo Gold--among other things it's got the best range and 100% Linux compatable

So I installed it and without rebooting I could access internal LAN not not external. Played around with it a bit but then had to reboot as the mouse built into my laptop started acting up.

That did it. It's working! This is great!! Why didn't I do it years ago?!?

Be careful - wireless networks are extremely insecure.
-Darin

Wireless is indeed great, but I gotta say I'm annoyed that every single company these days thinks that you should feel okay with needing to load drivers and proprietary stuff to pay for the privilege.

I've got a couple 2.4Mbps transmitters that I bought in about '99. AirEZY from OTC Wireless. Plug one into a Cat5, that's your 'server', plug the other into another Cat5, that's your 'client'. It simply extends the Cat5 wirelessly. No muss, no fuss, no drivers to load and 100% compatible with any OS because it works from the physical layer.

I can only imagine that the need for proprietary stuff derived from a company's marketing department wanting you to get hooked into using their stuff exclusively, but now that 802.11blah standards are out, that's kinda moot.

Happy roaming, and don't forget to use the encryption lest those with Pringles cantenna's be lurking in your neighborhood!

I LOVE my wireless cards. once you've had one you can never go back. I even travel with my base station so that I don't have to plug my modem in when visiting the in-laws and such

Unless you want to share your connection you should turn on access control by MAC address so that your machine is the only one that it allows to connect.

I got mine by running loose ethernet cables all over the floor and waiting for my wife to get fed up with them. When she asked me if we really needed to have all these wires all around I had my answer all set and ready and had the cards ordered the next day

Ack but now I'm having Linux issues. Anybody know of a good status monitor? Everyone says "Use wmwave" well guess what...I'm having make errors. Something that comes in an RPM would be nice...

Originally posted by binky:
Wireless is indeed great, but I gotta say I'm annoyed that every single company these days thinks that you should feel okay with needing to load drivers and proprietary stuff to pay for the privilege.

I've got a couple 2.4Mbps transmitters that I bought in about '99. AirEZY from OTC Wireless. Plug one into a Cat5, that's your 'server', plug the other into another Cat5, that's your 'client'. It simply extends the Cat5 wirelessly. No muss, no fuss, no drivers to load and 100% compatible with any OS because it works from the physical layer.

I can only imagine that the need for proprietary stuff derived from a company's marketing department wanting you to get hooked into using their stuff exclusively, but now that 802.11blah standards are out, that's kinda moot.

Happy roaming, and don't forget to use the encryption lest those with Pringles cantenna's be lurking in your neighborhood!

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yeah, enable WEP, but don't count on it. It has been shown to only be effective against casual sniffers. Anyone serious about stealing service, or snooping your data through wireless can break standard WEP (40-bit) in a couple of hours of listening. 128-bit WEP may gain you a few days of privacy. MAC access control is also easily breakable, as many wireless cards let you change the MAC on the fly.

Your only hope is to change your WEP key every couple hours. Not an elegant solution .

-Darin

I'm just wondering how long it will be until you put an ethernet card in your new toaster...

It's configured to only allow lan from this ip address (Easy to crack I know) and I will soon set up 128 bit encrypt. Not very secure but hardly any of my neighbors even have wired lan let alone wireless...

Besides, there's a commercial wireless outfit around here (Uses commercial level 802.11b in fact we went through them long ago before cable was avelable). Any hacker should be going for that right? Right??

Heh - war drivers may not discriminate based on who is at the other end of the radio. Often they are after sheer numbers ("I haxored 10 boxes today!"). But since you have some security enabled, it should be enough to deter them at first. If that company is running their wireless wide open (which happens over 30% of the time), that will be a much more attractive target than your laptop.

Interesting that you bring this up now. I'm currently in the midst of writing a paper about encryption in commonly used systems (wireless, web, and car remotes). It's appalling how woefully inadequate the security offered by WEP is, given how companies are using it, and what they're using it for.

-Darin

Yeah, something rolling code like in the keyless entry remotes would be nice wouldn't it.

My next step is to set up windows to require a password for file sharing (Not sure how to do that--I can figure it out I'm sure but since I'm here...anybody know?). Then what's the worst they can do? Leech off my connection for 10 minutes? Launch a DOS attack

I am worried about it--just not enough to loose sleep over it.

Wireless would be great if it were fast. I can't stand 10 or 11 megabit. Our school is wired for 10 megabit and it sucks horribly. Especially when my computer is about to crash and I need to back stuff up.

I don't think that my wireless works on my laptop I also don't feel like sending it to HP yet again to get it fixed. Although, if I DO send it in to HP like once or twice more Best Buy will get me a new laptop (it is best buy's lemon law basically) so it may not necissarily be a bad thing.

Spud

Originally posted by Albany Tom:
I'm just wondering how long it will be until you put an ethernet card in your new toaster...

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">ROFLMAO!!!

Hehehe! I've been running my Orinoco Gold for over 6 months now and it's really wonderful. I can take my laptop anywhere around the house and not have to fuss about the network connection. My only beef is the bandwidth is somewhat limited, and I don't want to pay $$$ for superior technology.

Welcome to the wireless network world.

Originally posted by Saaby:
Yeah, something rolling code like in the keyless entry remotes would be nice wouldn't it.

My next step is to set up windows to require a password for file sharing (Not sure how to do that--I can figure it out I'm sure but since I'm here...anybody know?). Then what's the worst they can do? Leech off my connection for 10 minutes? Launch a DOS attack

I am worried about it--just not enough to loose sleep over it.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Which version of windows? In the NT-series (NT, 2000, X), you just adjust the permissions of the share so that there isn't world read. At that point, you must log in before accessing the share.

The worst they can do? Well, they can do anything to your computers as if they were plugged into your LAN. They could watch your network and sniff for any plain-text passwords that you use. If you remote login to your linux box, they could nab your root password, then install a rootkit on your machine. Then your computer could be used to launch attacks on other systems. They could also steal data locally stored on one of your machines, including any credit card numbers, or other personal information.

Basically, in a war between security professionals and hackers, the security folks will *always* lose. There are more bad things crackers can do than ways to stop them.

-Darin

I've been off a wired hub that was...10 Mbps so 11 is an improvement! Switched out the hub for the wireless router (We already have a SMC wired router) so the Siemens is acting just as 10/100 switch+wireless access point.

I don't want to sound overly paranoid, but with NT & 2000 (I don't know if it's fixed in XP) you can gain access to anyone's files by spoofing that you're an application rather than a user. You can get to anything you want.

Any linkage that outlines how that exploit works?

Originally posted by Tater Rocket:
Wireless would be great if it were fast. I can't stand 10 or 11 megabit. Our school is wired for 10 megabit and it sucks horribly. Especially when my computer is about to crash and I need to back stuff up.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Quoted from the my source, "Wi-FI is an extension of wired Ethernet, bringing the same principles to wireless communication, and as such is ecumenical about the kinds of data that pass over it. It's primarily used for TCP/IP". Therefore, unless you are sharing a T3 connection (or faster) wireless will be fast enough. Considering that the fastest consumer interent access is probably SDSL (1.5Mbps both ways). In your situation, it is probably slow because you are trying to back up data from computer to computer. In that case, it is faster to be on a wired network.

The reality of throughput for me is this. Wired over 10bt ethernet I can get just over a meg a second when file sharing with my other Mac. Thats mega BYTE, not mega BIT. When I switch to 802.11b, even though it's 11 mega BIT, the best I can do is about 650k throughput.

So it's definitely slower, but not when sharing the internet connection which wont ever even use half that with anything that is consumer.

If you're backing up from one wireless computer to another wireless computer then that 650k is going to be halved again as the data goes through the basestation. You could create an ad hoc network and get the high speed 650k though. But thats probably more trouble than it's worth just to make a backup go a little faster.

My question would be what are you doing to generate so much data that you are backing up enough at any of these speeds to be a problem to your patience? Are you just copying your whole work folder over? I've been using rsync for quite a while now and after the initial backup it only sends the changes. not even the whole changed files, but transmits a diff which is applied to the file on the other end. You need a better backup program! I believe that there is a pretty good port of rsync for windows if thats what you're running.

James-

What you've observed is consistent with many other's results. While 802.11b specifies 11Mbit of bandwidth, in real usage you rarely get over about 7Mbit.

-Darin