What's to stop my neighbor from accessing my lan thru my wireless Linksys BEFW1154

[zlady]

Hello,
I just replaced my Linksys Cable/DSL router with a Wireless Access Point so I could access the internet from my Linux laptop. It was soooo easy that I'm a little concerned. What's stopping anyone in the area from sharing my internet connection...or worse, could someone access files on the computers I have here on my LAN??? If I add a WEP Passphrase (and I'm not even sure if that's what to do), I can't see a place to specify the passphrase from the Linux laptop and I can't connect anymore. Any suggestions?

zlady

 

[JackMDS]

First, I would say: You should be so lucky!

Most Home Wireless have very poor distance when it comes to closed area, not too many of your neighbors will receive your signal.

I am not familiar with your Wireless Router, but most of them allow you to restrict traffic by putting in the MAC number of the clients? cards. I.e. you find your wireless card?s MAC and you type it into the appropriate menu in the Router?s config.

 

[cipher00]

Jack is, as usual, quite correct. Restrict MAC addresses, add WEP, and change your router's configuration password. It won't stop a determined hacker, but it might cause someone to move on. Also, read this. Very interesting stuff.

 

[ktwebb]

WEP will take a bite out of your bandwidth. Varies from AP to AP but if you have the ability to restrict by MAC its not really needed anyway, unless you just want to do everything you can to stop unwanted attention.