Re: Very simple request on Linksys.

From: Jack Sandweiss (sandweiss_at_comcast.net)
Date: 03/20/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 16:56:58 -0800

WADR, throughout this thread, I have admitted my naivete, and asked to
be corrected if I was saying aomething stupid, and there were NO
responses to his post or mine.. You have no idea re: our home
environments, and the poster said "I am trying to make as secure as
possible". I was trying to answer "literally". Sorry for that. Are you
telling me that WEP is more secure than WPA? Of course, if you're a
target, someone can break in and steal your hard drives and whatever you
use for storage.

I live in a high tech. neighborhood, close to an Intel facility, and
many of their employees are my neighbors. When I turn on the laptop I
can usually choose from 6 wireless access points to connect, only one of
which is not encrypted with WPA. I think that WEP is more discouraging
than WEP for passerbys. If I'm wrong, then please correct me. We agree
on everything else. I upgraded to WPA, in part, because of reading posts
on this ng.

Jack (who certainly never claimed to be an "expert")

Woody wrote:

> It amazes me how many people read a bunch of rumored posts and instantly
> become experts on the subject. In a home environment WEP is just as secure
> as WPA encryption. Your rf signal is good for maybe 100 feet around tour
> house. Do you have that sensitive of data that someone would sit outside
> your house with a lab environment just to break your encryption? Would your
> neighbors be that interested in your data to set up a lab to try and break
> your code? Turn off ssid broadcast (this prevents most scanning software
> from seeing your id), Change ssid from default, turn on WEP 128 bit
> encryption, change user name and password to access router and you should be
> fine. You could also limit the number of dhcp users to two. Your more
> immediate concern should be from the wan port. Use one of the sites such as
> www,grc.com to verify all the incoming ports are stealthed. You may have to
> redirect port 113 to change it from closed to stealthed. Also a software
> firewall, anti virus, spyware cleaners, block third party cookies, hosts
> file, malware scanners are required tools.
>
>
> "Jack Sandweiss" <sandweiss@dslextreme.com> wrote in message
> news:113o484c1t9qje6@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>Phil-
>>
>>I looked up your router, and it supports 128 bit WEP, not WPA. You will
>>not
>>get good security with this router in my opinion. As I said earlier, I
>>recently bought a Linksys WRT54G for about $60, and it supports WPA-AES.
>>Remember, that your laptop must also support WPA. I just gave back a one
>>year old IBM Thinkpad Centrino (which only supported WEP) for a new
>>Toshiba
>>P4, and I set it up with the above router in about an hour. I think
>>that's
>>why you haven't seen WPA, etc, options when you tried to configure your
>>router.
>>
>>Jack
>>
>>
>>
>>Phil <mentzpnj@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>news:CJydnWIjhP0zR6bfRVn-hw@comcast.com...
>>
>>>Jack,
>>>
>>>Above my head! "63 character WPA", "WEP", "AES"...? You lost me. -
>>>Phil
>>>
>>>"Jack Sandweiss" <sandweiss@comcast.net> wrote in message
>>>news:113nlqgip9tv015@corp.supernews.com...
>>>
>>>>Unfamiliar with that "particular" router, but use 63 character WPA (NOT
>>>>WEP) encryption if it's available. If you can encrypt it with WPA, then
>>>>get a sofware firewall like free zonealarm to provide outbound
>>
>>protection.
>>
>>>>If WPA is not available, then get one that supports it. (I use a WRT54G
>>>>(linksys) router), and select WPA and AES when you configure it. It's
>>>>easy. Be sure and change the router default password.
>>>>
>>>>Jack
>>>>
>>>>Phil wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>I have a Linksys wireless router (BEFW11S4), for which I am trying to
>>>>>make as secure as possible. I am no tech wiz, and the terminology and
>>>>>instructions I find in various Internet sources are of little help
>>
>>(i.e.,
>>
>>>>>MAC filtering, what is that?). My setup is very simple. One desktop
>>
>>PC
>>
>>>>>and one laptop using a Linksys wireless card. That's it. What do I
>>
>>do,
>>
>>>>>enter, and where, at the default IP address of 192.168.1.1 to make my
>>>>>setup as secure as possible? I changed the SSID to something else,
>>>>>and
>>>>>turned off SSID Broadcast, but doing that terminates access to the
>>>>>laptop.
>>>>>
>>>>>Thank you for answering what I am sure is a very elementary question.
>>>>>
>>>>>- Phil
>>>
>>>
>
>

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