WIFI Sharing Program

On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:51:13 GMT, "known1" wrote in :

Get a 2nd wireless (access point) for your son, and just turn it off. With WPA on your wireless, he won't be able to connect. But he might still be able to leech from a neighbor. Better to assert yourself as a parent rather than rely on technology.

You router probably has within its firmware a way to control access times based on MAC (my Linksys and Zyxel have this feature) You should be able to set up a schedule that affects only specific PCs, iTouch, etc as defined by you.

I do this at my house. I have a specific cutoff time on school nights and I don't have to worry about it. If one of the kids is working a school project that's running late and they need more time then I can temporarily extend access. Works fine.

John Navas wrote:

It's not particularly hard to work around the MAC filtering, in case you were wondering. I considered doing the same as you a few years ago, but decided to leave the system open and just have a good chat with the boy. I think it worked.

Good for you.

MAC filtering works easily, but is not very good security. There are common methods of spoofing MAC addresses available:

I had one of the neighbors kids borrowing my internet connection via wireless. I eventually kicked him off after about five botnet infections and some massive Bitorrent uploads. He just couldn't keep his machine clean, so I blocked the MAC address of his laptop. It took him about a week to figure out what happened. ARPwatch then started seeing new MAC addresses every evening, which was getting tedious. So, I changed the WPA encryption key and didn't tell him. However, I wanted to see how swift he was, so I made the key a trivial dictionary word and waited. It took another week for him to crack it which I thought was rather impressive. About a month later, he got his own cable modem connection and is living somewhat happily ever after.

Yeah, talk to the kid. It's easier than a technology war.

If he's clueless, as others have suggested, MAC filtering in the router will do fine. However, realize that it's easy to spoof a different MAC address and bypass the blocking by MAC address.

If your router has a CLI (command line interface), you can possibly create a rule set to allow the kid to use the wireless only at specific hours. If you're lazy, put an electric light timer on the router, and only have it powered on during specific hours. Of course, your hours of use will need to coincide with the kids. Two wireless devices will also do the same thing. Just turn off the one he has access to. The other one will have a complex WPA encryption key that the kid supposidly can't crack.

I wasn't speaking of MAC filtering as a security measure. I was talking about the router's built-in scheduling/access ability which is based on MAC addresses. Actually, spoofing your MAC to gain access to a network using MAC filtering puts you subject to the access control based on MAC.

Only the honor system is weaker.

I'm not familiar with the Telstra 2. Log in to its Admin functions and you should be able to find the access/scheduling sections. I can't guarantee its part of the Telstra functionality but its pretty common and is found on both my Linksys and Zyxel routers. The only trick is determining the MAC of the computer(s) you want to control and using that MAC when you set up the access schedule. No big deal really.

Top notch security? Of courese not but it works quite well for my family and it should for your purposes as well. Always use the highest wireless security you can, WPA2 in my case, and use a unique phrase not a dictionary word.

known1 wrote:

I know the 2 wire modem wont support such thng - u can see who is using etc but cant limit use - would u know of a program that i can use to do such a thing and thank again for your help

Known1

There's nothing in the 2Wire firmware to allow scheduling for different users? Have you looked in all the firmware sections? Hmm... Your other alternatives would be to use a different router OR determine if a 3rd party firmware could be used on your router. Are you using a combo modem/router? If so, then its unlikely a 3rd party firmware would be available.

known1 wrote:

AFAIK, 2Wire don't sell direct to end users, they sell through ISPs who then customise the firmware. So, in theory there will be quite a few distributions of firmware to try for a 2Wire, more than most routers.

SO where would one start looking > Sounds like we are o n the right path anyway

thanks a milli>

Here's a 31-page thread about 2Wire firmware:

I happy enough to upgrade the firware - but telstra wont offer any supprt etc - not that i need them etc

there must be software out there that can manage my WIFI and its users .

Consider a plan b, wire it(cat 5) to the input of another wap/router, set it/that for some other ssid/channel, and then modify that one to your hearts content....