wireless networking these days?

[Genjix]

So I used to hear that wireless networking is not as fast as regular cat5 and unwanted people in the sourrounding area can tap into your network and surf the web with ur connection. is this still the case these days? or has technology improved?

[disk11]

Wireless seeds have not caught up to CAT5 cables as of yet. The best you can do is 54Mbps via 802.11a and 802.11g standards. 802.11b (11 Mbps) is generally fast enough to share internet connections in your house with a good signal.

As for people tapping in, on my router you have to know the channel # (1-11 for me) and a ssid that acts like a password in order to connect to a wireless system. You need to know both to get a signal.

[Genjix]

very interesting. I want to run wireless because all these cables are so annoying. I have a 2 story house and a basement. do you think this would work from the 2nd floor to the basement level?

[cerberus]

depends on what your house is made of... you might have to put a repeater on the 1st floor if you have thick floors or reinforced concrete.. best bet might be to put the access point on the 1st floor

[Genjix]

thanks for the info. Ill have to ask my brother if he wants to do this with me..

[Dermen]

I'm using 802.11b to share internet in my 2 story with a basement. I have the router upstairs and I still get a good signal in the basement.

For security you can turn off ssid broadcasting, enable mac filtering, and use wep incryption. There are other tricks as well. There is a good article in the beginner guides on the main page for securing a wireless network.

[SniperXX]

I know D-Link has a router that is 802.11g that can go 108mbps which is the fastest I have seen. But the thing is you need all Dlink stuff which isnt that bad, I got the 802.11b thats 22mbps and it works great and has range compareable to my friends WAP11, both our signals fade @ the same distances.

[stabber]

wireless is insecure period. WEP is very weak

[SniperXX]

To crack wep it will take a hacker a few days with a comp sniffing packets, I doubt someone would try that hard to get in your network, even neighbors.

Just use MAC filtering, disable SSID broadcast like they said above, you will be fine. If they dont know your SSID they cant connect and if they find that somehow (highly doubt it) they cant get one due to MAC filtering. :)

I dont see how its all the insecure these days. I have never had anyone get on my network and its been up for over a year and I had SSID boradcasting on and no MAC filtering for like 6months til I found out how to do it, still noone got past my WEP.

[kaltag]

Originally posted by stabber
wireless is insecure period. WEP is very weak

While this is mostly true there is now WPA which is a far cry better and at any rate, like was already mentioned, anyone wanting in would have to packet sniff the network for at least a day assuming you kept the network under load that entire time or it would take even longer.