trying to do the neighborly thing,,all mucked up

I picked up a wireless B card for my laptop today. Brought my laptop into the garage to get things setup (yes garage, it's our extended family room, cable tv hooked to old stereo system, carpeting, ceiling fans etc) Anyway I get myself all hooked up and I'm surfing - cool. Oh, I'm on my laptop now typing this. I check my little wifi connection in the systray and scan and I can see 2 other waps. I connect to the Netgear network and boom I'm on someone else's connection. I did an ipconfig /release, renew. Got the same ip that I had from my network. I go to Netgears website and d/l the manual for a wireless router and find out what the default sign on and pw are for the router's config page. I type the addy in my browser, present the default credentials and I'm in! I do some snooping, look at the log and see sites visited. (commercial delivery sites) Knowing that a neighbor has these delivery trucks frequent his home, I have an idea whose router/network I'm on. So I walk across the street and ask my neighbor if he has a wireless router and he says 'yes' and I ask if it is a Netgear and he says 'yes'. I then go on to tell him what I found and what I can do, and that we need to fix it. So we go to his pc and I log on to the router and have him change the admin pw. I then proceed to lock things down more, that's when it goes bad. His pc is wired and his wife's pc is wireless. I set the router to only accept their mac addresses. Boom the router decides to not work. Can't get an IP from the router on either pc. Did the router reset deal, reset to default, no worky. I plug his pc wired to cable modem, works. About this time, over an hour into a 'simple' fix, I'm feeling bad. He works from home and needs his internet. Well I can do that hooked strait to modem. He call's tech support and I talk to them going thru all the stuff. Long story short, turns out the router pewked, hardware prob, a new one is on the way. Just co-incidence, but I feel so bad that all of his stuff is not working. At least he is on the net, so he can do his job, owns his own business. Dangit anyway. If it is any consult to me, he says 'don't worry about it, you saw an issue, you came to me to fix it' etc.
While walking across the street to go home, I decide to go next door to another neighbor to see if they have broadband/wireless. Ring the doorbell, neighbor answers door, invites me in. I ask if they have broadband internet, answer, 'yes', I ask, you have a wireless router, answer = 'yes' , I ask, is it a linksys, answer = 'yes', I say I can see you. This neighbor had wep enabled so I couldn't connect. He had got his router set up a couple of weeks ago. I told him to turn off his ssid broadcast. He must have, as I can no longer see his wap/network when I scan.

wheww, lot's to type. So that's been my evening ....

Well at least your neighbor understood that sometimes **** happens, and it was just a coincidence. Most people that don't know anything about computers would have sworn up and down it was something you did that broke it. I can't stand those people :/

But cheers on doing the neighborly thing!

well, if by doing that, his hardware crapped out on him, it would have happened soon anyways. so at least you two got the problem fixed quikly. and you showed him to make sure that his wireless is secure, so other people can't suck up his connection and all.

And same with your other neighbor.

most people would have just leeched off the neighbors connectiong. you did the right thing by trying to fix the issue.

you are an hornorable man!

3 toasts for Jajmon!

Heh, I work with a half dozen people who use their neighbors wireless internet access. Not so honorable.

It sucks when you go out of your way to help someone and then make things worse... I think I'm the king of that - I seem to totally destroy things before making them better too

I have a wireless linksys now on my network....just sitting and being an accesspoint/switch, I have scanned all over my neighborhood with my wireless laptop to check if anyone else had one (which I was doubting) and didn't find any lol. (lots of non-tech people around here) plus I checked the range of our wireless....and at all of the edges of our property it is low to gone and loses the connection, which is perfect lol....even someone in the street wouldn't get a connection, so I don't even have WEP or security on, no risks!

PAWO said:

I have a wireless linksys now on my network....just sitting and being an accesspoint/switch, I have scanned all over my neighborhood with my wireless laptop to check if anyone else had one (which I was doubting) and didn't find any lol. (lots of non-tech people around here) plus I checked the range of our wireless....and at all of the edges of our property it is low to gone and loses the connection, which is perfect lol....even someone in the street wouldn't get a connection, so I don't even have WEP or security on, no risks!

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You talk about no risks. Just so you know you are wide open and to prove the point let me ask you a question. Do you have a very good wireless card with a very good antenna? I bet not and in that case you are testing the bounds of your wireless with just the basic wireless card. This will not tell you how far your signals can be recieved My advice is to turn off ssid broadcast and to use some type of security whether that be WEP, WAP, and/or mac addy filtering. Good luck With it just understand you are not secure by obscurity!

PAWO said:

I have a wireless linksys now on my network....just sitting and being an accesspoint/switch, I have scanned all over my neighborhood with my wireless laptop to check if anyone else had one (which I was doubting) and didn't find any lol. (lots of non-tech people around here) plus I checked the range of our wireless....and at all of the edges of our property it is low to gone and loses the connection, which is perfect lol....even someone in the street wouldn't get a connection, so I don't even have WEP or security on, no risks!

Click to expand...

I would put wep on. Lots of wardrivers dont use stock antennas, they use bigger ones mounted inside on on the roof of the car. With those they get get a better signal from farther away.

@jajmon- Great work as a good neighbor. I did the same thing. I saw a linksys open and I knew my friend just got a new one. So I asked him if he just plugging it in and went, and he was all "ya". Lol. He knows comps but he had forgotten, lol, he was glad I reminded him. He and I are the only wireless signals I picked up while driving around a small radius by my house. There was another before and I helped them secure theirs too.

Update - my neighbor and wife came over tonite and visited me in my garage. They came over with a couple of 'beverages' in hand for them, and a 1.75 liter 'gift' for me in helping them out. I was a bit surprised. I was planning on bringing over to them a couple of suitcases of 'beverages' , cause I felt bad about the deal. Anyways, they got their new router they are all hooked up and secure. He got it setup with help from cable co a few days ago. While they were here I did a scan of available networks and couldn't see his. I could still see my other neighbor, but WEP is enabled, so that is OK. So long story short, after some issues, they are very thankful that I jumped in to help. I'll be helping him soon on backup routines as he has a lot of photos and quotes he needs to backup for his biz and he want's me to help him and is willing to pay. Who knows I my be 'thirsty' again.