ellory said:Is wireless safe? What should I worry about?

With a strong password, WPA can be viewed as secure. WEP should only be viewed as enough to stop casual eavesdropping. If you use WEP you should expect that if someone wants your data, that they can get it.

WPA is, for all practical purposes, unbreakable. It, like other security does have an exposure - brute force dictionary attacks. i.e. just keep picking passwords and trying them.

To prevent this, choose a strong password. Steve Gibson's password generator site is an ideal place to get a randon password https://www.grc.com/passwords Its one time generation, and is as close to random and strong as anything that can be generated. Because it relies on SSL encryption, the password it serves will be delivered securely to you, even over an otherwise insecure connection

And, because it prevents akami and other services from caching it, no one, even if you generated it over a public computer, can even see what you got once you close the web page, navigate to another site or refresh

If you use your wireless network at home, or at the office, and it is set up as discussed earlier (WPA security; router password; unique SSID ) then you can consider wireless safe enough for financial transactions.

However, when connecting to an unknown access point or a public hot spot, you should only consider information secure if you are using corporate VPN security which sets up a secure end-to-end tunnel

Absent VPN tunnels, from a public hot spot, or unknown access point, do not perform any financial transactions. Do not access anything that requires a password that you would not freely hand out on the street

Even secure websites (those with the little "key / locked" icon) are vulnerable to attacks. For example a Man-In-The-Middle attack coupled with an Evil Twin Access Point can compromise even otherwise secure websites

I've got WEP 64 bit encryption between my wireless router and my computer. I believe my router is enabled for dynamic SSID. My question is: Am I safe to use this kind of connection for online banking and paying for stuff online with a credit card? I'm not on all the time for this and I always noticed that the lock always appears in the lower right hand corner for my sites. Thanks in advance.

I would start by checking for updated Brother print driver software

Just read through this whole thing again, stickys and all. Glad to see you corrected the WPA-PSK section. (Was a little "paranoic" before Still a lot of good stuff. Also read through Verizon's Westell link...geeze...nine screens of stuff to basically tell you to turn off the router side of the Westell (effectively making it a bridge) and use the Linksys as the router. Well...I guess it's good to be complete Again...a useful resource. Thanks ellory

Banshai said:skmerrow....this might be totally out of whack, but how are you assigning an address to the printer? Could dhcp lease be expiring and thus not valid later? Would take a long time to expire normally but I have seen them adjusted to 6-7 hours at some customer sites..not sure why. Anyway, try assigning a static address and reserving that address in your dhcp configuration to eliminate conflicts. And if I understand correctly, you CAN connect the printer usb to your desktop and still be able to print wirelessly from the laptops. Just share the printer on the network after you get it running on the desktop. Desktop wopuld have to be on though, and you wouldnt really need the network part of the printer.

I was able to share the printer when the DESKTOP was turned on. But since I purchased a network printer it was not the way I wanted to use it. I spent an extra hundred to save a little energy and get a network, duplex printer, which now works BTW. The problem seemed to be one small problem. In the printer and faxes menu - under print- the use printer offline line item was checked. When I removed the check it now works. 3 calls to Brother highest level of tech support and they couldn't fix it. One check mark removed and it now works (and works great BTW).

Good Da Ellroy. Nice to see you back on the thread now that your settled downunder.

ellory said:Is wireless safe? What should I worry about?

With a strong password, WPA can be viewed as secure. WEP should only be viewed as enough to stop casual eavesdropping. If you use WEP you should expect that if someone wants your data, that they can get it.

WPA is, for all practical purposes, unbreakable. It, like other security does have an exposure - brute force dictionary attacks. i.e. just keep picking passwords and trying them.

To prevent this, choose a strong password. Steve Gibson's password generator site is an ideal place to get a randon password https://www.grc.com/passwords Its one time generation, and is as close to random and strong as anything that can be generated. Because it relies on SSL encryption, the password it serves will be delivered securely to you, even over an otherwise insecure connection

And, because it prevents akami and other services from caching it, no one, even if you generated it over a public computer, can even see what you got once you close the web page, navigate to another site or refresh

If you use your wireless network at home, or at the office, and it is set up as discussed earlier (WPA security; router password; unique SSID ) then you can consider wireless safe enough for financial transactions.

However, when connecting to an unknown access point or a public hot spot, you should only consider information secure if you are using corporate VPN security which sets up a secure end-to-end tunnel

Absent VPN tunnels, from a public hot spot, or unknown access point, do not perform any financial transactions. Do not access anything that requires a password that you would not freely hand out on the street

Even secure websites (those with the little "key / locked" icon) are vulnerable to attacks. For example a Man-In-The-Middle attack coupled with an Evil Twin Access Point can compromise even otherwise secure websites

Your view on WPA being unbreakable is incorrect. Kismet, an open source Linux based wireless sniffing program used by the FBI and hackers alike, can find hidden SSID's, identify physical location of routers using GPS, and can pretty much identify any non-government wireless protocol network. When coupled with Airopeek or Aircrack, keys to any wireless network can be determined if the network stays up long enough.

But your other advice is fairly sound. Rule of thumb is, if someone wants to get to your data/information, they can. Your job is to make it as hard as possible for them.

diana253 said:Hi...
I've some problem here...I've setup the Internet Connection Sharing for my home network.. The LAN works juz fine as well as the internet connection sharing..Now i got one pc that connect directly to the internet broadband..a desktop that uses linksys usb wifi adapter, two laptops that has wifi built in..all those can already get the internet connection ...

The main computer uses the Wireless-G ADSL Gateway Linksys..and i've done the setting to allow another computer to connect to internet through this computer...

The problem here is ... I need to secure my internet connection..when i use the setting of ICS all other computer within range can access to my broadband line... so how do secure my connection?? Do i need to use certain firewall or windows already provide the function?? If so could you possibly show me the step by step of how to do it...Thanks in advance...1. Please post your question in a seperate thread.

2. Please read the third sticky and post with the requested information

3. Don't use ICS. For the price and stability, just use a connection directly to your router and use that to share your broadband connection

ellory said:

Two year anniversary for this thread



Shamless post.

Btw, I don't agree with your views on upgrading the router's firmware. I have always found improved performance and stability with the newest firmware. Also, I never had a problem with the Windows Zero Configuration utility. It works great.

EDIT: sorry delete post accidently ask a question here

bought some buffalo whr-g54s to replace a netgear 614s. With the netgear, I never had problems with dropped connections. I put in the buffalo, my Wired (and only wired, wireless is fine) drops about every 24 hours or so.

Tried Buffalo 1.4 firmware drops at about 24 hours
Tried DD-WRT sp2 and sp3 in all the mini, micro and standard varieties drops every 12-24 hours
Am now using Tomato. this went 36 hours before the PC Connection dropped.

Usually, it's after periods of inactivity that does it. I would need to reboot my wired PC. repairs, disable/enable and ipconfig /renew does nothing.

ADSL Modem (speedstream 5100b) with PPPOE on the modem.

Router is running no security and disabled ssid - temporary setup until I can find out how this can be remedied

Also, I do run BT but not heavily.

Any ideas? Thanks for the help