Access control or Encryption?

Lady_K

Is access control better than using encryption for the linksys Wrt54gs?

Is it safer and is it easier to set up?

Any tips on how to do it would be appreciated

nickmack

Ideally both!

You should certainly turn on encryption, and preferably access control as well.

See this sticky:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=121274

MercilessKiller

I'd say only encryption is needed for a home network

espresso

Although not specifically for a Linksys, follow Albert's guide on how to make your setup secure. It's easy if you follow the instructions, read your routers user guide and you only need to do it once!

Lady_K

There are 4 people using this wireless system though (students) hope its easy to do

albertross_2

encryption is far more important than access control (but both, and disabling ssid broadcast is good). If you don't use encryption, and just use access control, anyone in the street can use a sniffer, and listen to every packet that is transmitted on the network, including passwords, emails, web sites etc.. Access control on it's own can be bypassed by them spoofing your trusted mac addresses.

I suggest you use a long WPA random key from https://www.grc.com/passwords. If you don't and your daughter lives in a student area, it will probably get hacked..

As expresso said, once it's done properly you can forget about it, if you do it half heartedly with a short key, you may think it is secure, but it may not be.

The easisest way is to get a random 63 character key, save it to a text file, and use copy and paste to transfer it to the other PC's, or connect them all with a wired connection to the router, and then go into the web interface, and copy and paste it that way to setup wireless.

Lady_K

Well they can start off with the access control and look at the other stuff and add them at a later date, they have nothing at the moment. It seems quite complicated but I'l try and read it through and see what I can make of it

Lady_K

With access control but no encryption could one guy in the house that will not pay the bells get in and use it?

espresso

Lady_K wrote:

Well they can start off with the access control and look at the other stuff and add them at a later date, they have nothing at the moment. It seems quite complicated but I'l try and read it through and see what I can make of it

MAC access control is not adding security.

It is actually easier to set a long hex WPA-PSK password into the router and then simply cut & paste this into each PC that needs to connect rather than mess about with obtaining MAC codes for each piece of equipment.

Once you have set up WPA-PSK it's done! Remember to change the routers password otherwise anyone could gain access and change the settings anyway.

espresso

Lady_K wrote:

With access control but no encryption could one guy in the house that will not pay the bells get in and use it?

In a word yes because with a bit of knowledge he could spoof the MAC.

:rolleyes:

Lady_K

I dont think they know what the routers pw is, I'm sure they never gave it one they had the biggest struggle setting it up in the first place. The perfect pw thing seems good though I'll read it through, thanx