New Wireless Network - Security Help

[Nick M]

Went to local BestBuy and picked up:

• AirPlus Xtreme G DI-624 11g router
• D-Link AirPremire AG DWL-AG530 11a/11g PCI card
• D-Link AirPlus AG DWL-G510 11g PCI card

Hooked these up and from plug + play got a steady signal. More then one - appears there are many unsecured networks around my building, mine included. My loading speed used to be very fast before but now seems even a bit slow, makes me wonder, although the little connection icon states " Connected at 108MBps, Signal Strength: Excellent. " Blazing fast when I connect through LAN port, but when I try the wireless card, it kinda crawls. May I ask why?

I'm very new to wireless networking - I realize there are things such as WEP, encryption, etc, but I'm not sure as to how to utilze it. Might I have some help and suggestions as to how I may make my internet connection secure, accessible only to my three computers, and not the outside world?

Also, if WEP is enabled, then must it ( password ) be entered every time one turns on the machine?

Thank you in advance

 

[apu95]

hey gracie.
nice to know uve taken the wifi plunge

as for the speed, its weird that its not working as it should be. for that im gonna suggest you go into the routers config and change the channel you're on to a less used one (im on 8 personally).

as for security, i dont wanna have wep, i dont know why. what i do have is MAC address filtering, which i think is just as effective. in your router there should be an option to enable that. the MAC address is an address (in hex if im not mistaken) thats unique to every piece of network hardware.
anyways, in your routers config there should be a place to enable that, as well as see the wireless devices (their IPs and MACs) on the wifi network.
in the case u cant see the IPs and MACs, you can go into each computer u want to be used wirelessly and find the MAC address of it (it should be in the properties or info of the network card).

hope it helps

Apu

EDIT: for the last keschun, no, it doesnt have to be typed in everytime since windows saves it when u put it in

 

[Mainframeguy]

The advice from APU to select another channel is a good idea - chances are if those other networks are all unsecured they have taken default channel setting like you. Ideally you wat a channel all to yourself.

One thing APU did not mention, which I would do, is to stop your system broadcasting the SID and also to change your SID from the default to something relevant to yourself.

Personally this is the only security measure I have taken - If someone wants to use my bandwidth I'm kinda generous - but I don't actually think they will gues the SSID to connect.

 

[apu95]

yeah what Mainframeguy says is also valid, to not broadcast the SSID...i dont have that enabled either, dont know why i gotta work on that heh heh

 

[Henyman]

i broadcast the ssid, make it easyer


i use 128 bit wep, though noone around here to get in

i would use mac filtering, as well as chosing a less busy channel, and use wep as well for good mesure

 

[ShepsCrook]

One thing you might want to look at at the D-Link AirPlus Extreme. Is look at the back of the box and the box where they check the speeds. You will notice that the 11mbs box is checked, but not the 54mb or the 108mbs. Not sure if it's just an error, or if it's true to the mistake. But I haven't heard too many amazing reviews about the D-Link nor the Linksys versions of Speedboost or Extreme.