Wireless Router + Card = £49.95 w/free delivery. (merged)

mistry_2

If you do lock yourself out with entering the wrong MAC, don't worry! you can always connect to your router via a network cable. The MAC address filtering only works for the wireless connection.

Here are a few tips to keep your wireless secure.
1. Use a shared key (WEP/WPA)
2. Lock it down to MAC addresses
3. Once you have the first 2 working hide your SSID. This is the name you give your wireless network.

Step three will stop neigbour from just browsing the air and seeing your network, effectvly not letting them know it's there, to try and hack into.

HTH.

Miniwinnie

I have a home PC (Dell P4 3000) and business laptop (IBM) that uses VPN. I would like to be able to use these at the same time on my ADSL Broadband connection. I don't need/require wireless. Would I need a router to be able to achieve this and is there anything else I would need?
Thanks
Miniwinnie1

Searcher2

Miniwinnie wrote:

I have a home PC (Dell P4 3000) and business laptop (IBM) that uses VPN. I would like to be able to use these at the same time on my ADSL Broadband connection. I don't need/require wireless. Would I need a router to be able to achieve this and is there anything else I would need?
Thanks
Miniwinnie1

As far as I know if both have RJ45 network capability you just need to buy a crossover cable such as this :

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?WebProductID=262972

(only an example)

That is what I was going to do to enable my 2 PC's to use the internet at the same time - but I was too tempted by the Amazon offer - the fact that the router has a hardware firewall in it actually swung it as you obviously don't get this protection with a cable! :-)

gavinp

Babbler wrote:

I secured my network by only allowing PC's with certain MAC addresses (the equivelent of a products serial number - unique to each card in the world). This can be done using the web browser interface - although not being at home at the moment I can't give further details. This then only allows computers with those card MAC addresses that you specifty to use the router.

Using MAC filtering is worthwhile but should not be the sole method of securing your wireless network as a lot of network cards available will allow you to change your MAC address and someone could therefore easily impersonate your PC and gain access...

Please bear in mind that MAC addresses are broadcast unencrypted (even if you use WPA-PSK or WEP wireless encryption) so filtering does not offer much in the way of security - and is even easier to defeat than WEP.

Thanks

Gavin

Betty_Boop

Seeing as so many of us have this router (I gave up and bought from elsewhere - don'yt ask!) how about someone knowledgable writing up a SET-UP GUIDE for all these Mac/Wep oojemaflips!

Miniwinnie

Searcher2 wrote:

As far as I know if both have RJ45 network capability you just need to buy a crossover cable such as this :

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?WebProductID=262972

(only an example)

That is what I was going to do to enable my 2 PC's to use the internet at the same time - but I was too tempted by the Amazon offer - the fact that the router has a hardware firewall in it actually swung it as you obviously don't get this protection with a cable! :-)

I have networked up using a Belkin SOHO networking Kit previously. I got both Internet connections woking but VPN would not work. Trying to find something that will allow VPN to run on my laptop and use home PC too.
Any other suggetions?
Thanks,
Miniwinnie1

gavinp

Miniwinnie wrote:

I have networked up using a Belkin SOHO networking Kit previously. I got both Internet connections woking but VPN would not work. Trying to find something that will allow VPN to run on my laptop and use home PC too.
Any other suggetions?
Thanks,
Miniwinnie1

VPN's work differently to normal web traffic so I suspect you may not be able to do this using Internet Connection Sharing depending on the version of Windows and the type of VPN used.

If the PC sharing the broadband is running Windows 2000 or earlier, VPNs will not work.

Microsoft have produced the technote below if the sharing PC is running Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314066

To avoid problems, it is far easier to just buy an ADSL router. EBuyer do a good cheap one for £22.99:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?&product_uid=48449

You have not wasted your money with the network cards as these are used to connect to the ADSL router. Using a router also avoids having to leave the sharing PC switched on all the time.

Thanks

Gavin

xueta

Thanks for all your tips ...

I've now managed to secure my wireless network by:-

1. Enabling WPA-PSK
2. Restricting access to listed MAC addresses
3. Disabling SSID broadcast

I used the Ethernet cable supplied with the Netgear router to link the devices to perform the set-up. The wireless connection was no good for this as it drops after each change made to the settings.

The router was configured using the web browser. Each additional wireless device (e.g. laptop) was configured using the Wireless Assistant found on the desktop. There were prompts to enter passphrases to generate WEP or WPA encryption and as long as the passphrase for the router matched that of the wireless adapter settings, the system works like a dream! I'm really happy with this package.

Yours,
A Very Smug "non-techie"!!

gavinp

Just a quick note - if you use WPA-PSK, please make sure the passphrase you use is 20 characters long or more and using upper and lower case characters and numbers ideally.

e.g. "ICanNeverRememberMyBl**dyPasswordsIn2005" is a strong passphrase.

The only possible way to break WPA-PSK at present is a dictionary-based attack so if you use a single or short word likely to be in a dictionary, you are vulnerable.

So using "yellow" or "password" for example is a very bad idea.

Thanks

Gavin

TechSaver_2

There is useful info on setting up a wireless router in this review of the Netgear DG834G (older, 54 Mbps model). Link:ADSLGuide Review