Installed a wireless router in my garage last night

[HoosierBuddy]

When I built my garage in 2006, one of the things I thought to do at the time was run a network cable into it. You may remember that in 2006, WiFi wasn't "all the rage" so, the original goal of the network cable was to hook a PC up to my network switch someday.

Fast forward 6 years, I've never used the network cable for anything. The old network switch on my home network was trashed out long ago when we upgraded the house to DSL using a Westel wireless router. The Westel doesn't do a good job of covering the whole house though...so I finally bit the bullet and bought a Netgear dual band wireless router and hooked it up to the empty network cable in the garage.

Now I've got full wifi in the garage and more of the house has a signal.

The only real issue I had was trying to setup the G-band section of the router to the same SSID and Passphrase as the existing wireless. I couldn't make that work at all. I finally just reset the thing to factory defaults so my iphone and laptop would see it as a second network. Seems to work fine, even though it's a bit of a kludgy setup, with a wireless router plugged in through a long network cable to the old Westel (The Westel is a combo dsl modem/router/wireless access point.)

Phil

 

[vartz04]

Did the same thing in my parents basement when I lived at home because there was no signal down there. Still works to this day.

 

[richj11]

When I finally came out of the stone age and DSL became available in my area, I was in heaven!

I was amazed at how many devices in my home would use the internet if I could connect them (satellite receivers, TV's, game consoles, tablets, etc). Also having the coverage from a single router was an issue in some rooms.

I didn't want to run cables everywhere. I considered wifi adapters, but that can get expensive.

Then I discovered DD-WRT http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

A couple trips to the Goodwill and I soon had a drawer full of Linksys Routers, usually for about $5 a piece. Just plug it in and make sure it lights up...

Upgrade the routers firmware to the DD-WRT version and I now have one set up as a "master" that my DSL is plugged in to. Then I have three more scattered through out the house that are bridges to the main router.

One of the bridges is set up at my home entertainment center, so the satellite receiver, video game consoles and Theater PC are plugged into that one.

The routers work great and I get WiFi everywhere in my house now... yep, even the detached garage!

 

[Makoto]

here's what i'd do. set the router to only allow devices with certain MAC addresses on your network. that way you arent worrying about passwords or anything and no matter how tenacious jimmy the war-driver down the street gets he can't connect to your network because his laptop isn't on "the list".

this is how my home network is set up.

i also recommend using a hardline. nothing beats a hardline for security and stability.

 

[richj11]

Funny thing, I was just reading an article about WEP, WPA, etc....

If I had any neighbors close enough to leech my signal, I might be worried...

I'm not worried.

 

[HoosierBuddy]

I'm looking at this from the other side of the food chain.

Before I got an iphone (which can supply wifi to my laptop through 3G), and I had a laptop and I work in the field a lot, I COUNTED on being able to sap someone's wifi connection to do my job. A lot of the devices I work on in the field communicate through cellular based IP activity. When I was 30 miles from the office and needed to jump on the internet for 2 minutes to verify communication, I'd just jump on whoever had an unsecure network, try to link up to the IP address on the unit I was troubleshooting and verify it was working. It beat the heck out of driving 30 miles to my office and finding out that there was no communications and having to drive back!

I consider myself a pretty moral person, and it never bothered me.

If one of my neighbors called me up tonight and asked me for my WEP key I suppose I'd give it to them. I live in a pretty "neighborly" place though.

Phil

 

[mscribellito]

WEP is completely and utterly flawed and easy to crack. Go with WPA2.

 

[Boyd]

About 3 years ago I went to visit a buddy who had moved out of state a couple years prior.

First night there I needed to check my email so I asked him if he had wireless internet. He says, "yeah, the cable company installed it when I moved in 2 years ago, but everytime I try to use it it asks me for a password and I don't know it."

 

[Falcon67]

>here's what i'd do. set the router to only allow devices with certain MAC addresses on your network.

And you think I can't sniff your device MAC info then change the broadcast MAC on my laptop? Bad plan. WPA2 plus MAC address restrictions. And change the default admin password to something good, even if you have to put it on a sticky and tape it to the bottom of the router.

>I consider myself a pretty moral person, and it never bothered me.

People are fuzzed up by the technology and it's not very user friendly, so there is plenty of open systems out there. Including professional offices and such. But it's still theft of services and unauthorized access of a computer network - maybe LOL

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/pr_burning_wifi_squatting/

 

[richj11]

Now THAT is funny....

About 3 years ago I went to visit a buddy who had moved out of state a couple years prior.

First night there I needed to check my email so I asked him if he had wireless internet. He says, "yeah, the cable company installed it when I moved in 2 years ago, but everytime I try to use it it asks me for a password and I don't know it."

 

[solar_eclipse2]

I kind of went overkill with my network There's at least one network jack in the important rooms in the house (bedrooms, living room, dining room) but sometimes as many as 4. All the tv's and game systems hook into that. I have a dual band wireless router with WPA2 security for us to use and then a separate guest wireless network with WPA2 that has no access to any network resources.

 

[boosteddsm92]

here's what i'd do. set the router to only allow devices with certain MAC addresses on your network. that way you arent worrying about passwords or anything and no matter how tenacious jimmy the war-driver down the street gets he can't connect to your network because his laptop isn't on "the list".

this is how my home network is set up.

FYI, your network is even easier to get on than one that's using just WEP.

 

[osborn.ozzy]

I use dd-wrt on my router also. I have wnr3500l

 

[ddawg16]

A lot of good information......

On the topic of MAC filtering....yea, it is possible for someone to be outside your house snooping...but the only way they are going to ghost your MAC is to catch it when you first turn on your computer...if your computer is already on....it's not transmitting the MAC...

We use a combination....MAC filtering and WPA2....I also look at my wireless log now and then to see who has 'tried' to log in....

I do not share any of the drives on our computers.....firewall is always on....and we use Outlook for email.