Wireless Access Point
- Thread starter Skibum
- Start date
If you set up a test and then don't transfer much information over the network, then you won't see a problem.rocco said:
Since it is dependent on the amount of traffic, I see potential for home networks to have a lot more traffic now and in the future. Think about large media files or streaming media. As more and more people start using this stuff home networks will have more traffic. We are talking multiple gigabyte files being transfered back and forth or streamed - that amounts to a lot of network traffic. I routinely move large files from my PVR machine to my primary working machine to a file server. This is all done on wires. But if it were wireless, it would provide someone trying to break in with a lot of information to work with.
Skibum said:
Correct. Must be flat where you live, because obviously, you've never encountered someone that lives on a hill.
People who have tested it.
14 Km, not bad, of course that's with a booster antenna on both sides, but a normal WAP can be accessed from a hilltop over 2 miles away. As you said, it's all about line of sight.
Since Ski likes me so much today, I figured I would post this article, another reason why one should secure their wireless network (even if the guy in the article is lying):
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/health/5520020/detail.html
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/health/5520020/detail.html
rocco
Active Member
It isn't bad advice, but don't consider it "secure".stealth said:
It is trivial to both snoop the SSID and spoof the MAC address. If your network is unencrypted, someone just needs to listen to a couple of packets in order to pick up both the SSID and MAC address. And you don't need either to listen in.
As far as the throughput hit posed by encryption, my understanding is that all recent chipsets do the encryption in hardware, and have negligible impact on throughput.
Rocco is correct. The idea is sound but in practice it is not secure.
The FBI demonstrated cracking WEP in under 3 minutes I believe.
Distance for 80211? I believe there was a case out west (near colorado) where they took two dishes and got range in the order of 50-70 kilometers. I dont remember the exact figure but it was impressive. If anyone is truly interested I'll try to find the link (and this was with one of the older technologies, b if i remember correctly).
In regards to unsecured networks, I work in Manhattan, and take a train home, as a test the other day I enabled the radio on my laptop on my way home. I could not count the number of networks I wound up seeing, many of them unsecured. Granted there were some, and no more than say 8 at a time, but if I needed net access to do something it would not have taken long (assuming I was not in a train).
For wireless devices, I know they wish to make it as easy as possible, but perhaps that is not the right tact. I would guess that it is a huge percentage of the AP's out there that have the default ssid and admin username/password. There are clear opportunities here, even if the software just forces it to be secured upon installation.
All that being said, who has the foil hats?
The FBI demonstrated cracking WEP in under 3 minutes I believe.
Distance for 80211? I believe there was a case out west (near colorado) where they took two dishes and got range in the order of 50-70 kilometers. I dont remember the exact figure but it was impressive. If anyone is truly interested I'll try to find the link (and this was with one of the older technologies, b if i remember correctly).
In regards to unsecured networks, I work in Manhattan, and take a train home, as a test the other day I enabled the radio on my laptop on my way home. I could not count the number of networks I wound up seeing, many of them unsecured. Granted there were some, and no more than say 8 at a time, but if I needed net access to do something it would not have taken long (assuming I was not in a train).
For wireless devices, I know they wish to make it as easy as possible, but perhaps that is not the right tact. I would guess that it is a huge percentage of the AP's out there that have the default ssid and admin username/password. There are clear opportunities here, even if the software just forces it to be secured upon installation.
All that being said, who has the foil hats?
802.11 is not to hard to make long links. I have some out to 8 miles. I am not using dishes ether. I can drive through my home town and find networks wide open. Some people don't care and don't know how to set them up they just plug and play.
Most people at home aren't gonna see the lose of bandwidth ether, unless someone is really flogging the system.
Most people at home aren't gonna see the lose of bandwidth ether, unless someone is really flogging the system.
