Wireless routers

I

ivydene

Geek Trainee
I know it's not absolutely relevant to the pc itself, but does anyone have experience of wireless routers and what they can be expected to do?

In brief, I run a guest house and would like to offer internet access in the individual rooms, but without running network cabling. I have ADSL on my sole office pc.

The question: would an ADSL router allow guests within 50 meters to use my connection and what would I need?

Thanks, you knowledgeable folks!undefinedundefined
 
most routers allow connections within distances much greater than that. Basically, as I'm sure you know, a router splits a single connection to different PC's around a, well, network. So, by connecting a router to your phone line and checking that the other PC's/laptops have the correct PCI cards installed, you will be able to split the connection around the place easily. Bear in mind with wireless the connection isn't a constant speed, but usually very good. It also accelerates streaming and downloading speeds. You will be able to share files etc providing you allow the individual folders to be Shared. Good idea to make one folder only and then add the documents you want viewed to it later. Uh, make sure you disable all the firewalls except the one in your router, otherwise it starts to get screwy. Netgear are very good for routers etc, so check out their site at www.netgear.com. Hope this helps.
 
You provide a ray of light! Thank you.

When you talk of sharing files, I don't want to give guests access to my pc (heaven forbid!) but to offer them simultaneous access to the web. Is this possible if they have, or if I provide, a PCI card for their laptop.

If five guests log on together, won't the speed decay?
 
nope, thats the beauty of a router. You can disable sharing of any files, and simply share the internet connection and printers etc around the building.

You can also choose which folders to share, but if there is no need, then don't worry about it because by default, no folder has Sharing Enabled.

Essentially, with broadband, anyway, each person could be emailing, browsing the net and talking on the phone all on one connection. Nice and simple.
 
I think by default it doesn't allow sharing of files, printers etc! The wireless router should allow you to give your guests access to the internet easily! Though you might want to make it so they are unable to download files etc and only visit sites and use email!

Because if, one person is downloading a file, it could slow down the network quite a bit; otherwise it shouldn't matter too much!

Also there are more expensive routers (can’t remember the name), which allow you to control traffic, so you can see how much speed each user gets!
 
only if he has/gets a Netgear DG824M Wireless router :) I have the Netgear DG834G, excellent router :)
 
Sniper said:
only if he has/gets a Netgear DG824M Wireless router :) I have the Netgear DG834G, excellent router :)
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Netgear does make a very good SOHO router! I hate their NICs, but their routers & switches are awesome for the price range.
 
It's not to hard to secure a wireless router. If you know what computers are going to be connecting to the router just turn on MAC filtering and input the MAC address's that are on your wireless cards.

Apart from that turn on WEP/WPA encryption and either use a non standard SSID or if possible disable SSID and it should help quite a bit.

As far as routers go I'd highly suggest Linksys, I may be a bit biased as a Linksys VAR but you can't go wrong with a company owned by Cisco :).
 
syngod said:
It's not to hard to secure a wireless router. If you know what computers are going to be connecting to the router just turn on MAC filtering and input the MAC address's that are on your wireless cards.
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Um, hate to disagree, but I disagree. :smileup: Using MAC to filter possible connections is overly simplistic. Not intending to be rude, but anybody smart enough to go WAR hunting and locate your Wireless LAN in the first place is going to be smart enough to circumvent rudimentary security precautions. Since your wireless clients will be broadcasting their MAC addresses, and since those MACs will be allowed in the router's whitelist, all your hacker has to do is spoof his MAC to match one of yours (very easy in Linux).

A better solution is to use a 512+bit strong, random key in for client authorization. It's a hassle, but so is inputting every client's MAC into your firewall tables.
 
I know :).

I'm guessing in a guest house though there shouldn't be too much of a threat of WAR drivers trying to break in.

Filtering MAC's and turning on WEP/WPA and turning off SSID should be enough to keep the anyone who is just going to casually be passing by off your router.

If it's highly critical to keep everyone off I'd go with a RADIUS based solution.
 
Now you are really educating me! Your level of discussion is quite elevated and mightily impressive.

However, I grasp the gist and will act accordingly. I agree that there will not be many passers-by who are trying to hack in to a guest house, so ultra sophisticated measures to prevent breaking in should not be necessary.

Thank you all again.
 
ivydene said:
Now you are really educating me! Your level of discussion is quite elevated and mightily impressive.

However, I grasp the gist and will act accordingly. I agree that there will not be many passers-by who are trying to hack in to a guest house, so ultra sophisticated measures to prevent breaking in should not be necessary.

Thank you all again.
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No problem. Also, to clarify a little, I don't mean to come off as an alarmist -- to the contrary, I believe that simply having a [non-stupid] encrypted password on your WEP is effective at keeping 98% of would be "hackers"* off of your wireless network. They may still sniff your wireless transmissions, but that's a different matter. However, my overall obvservation is that usually the security measures are in fact available, yet people choose not to use them because it will cause a minor inconvenience. Usually, having security measures set up to be easy for you is incidentally also easy for hackers/crackers! And thus the trade-off... convenience, or solidarity? On the other hand, if one simply makes a habit of secure practices in general, it's not so much of a bother in the end.

* Note quotations :chk:
 
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