Unallowed access

The reason is probably somebody's system sees your SSID and tries to connect to it from time to time, when they get home from work or turn on their system, because your signal is stronger than the one they want or there is a WAP at work but not home.

If you disabled SSID this would not happen innocently.

Volker is right about the security measures -- your network is unsecure. All somebody has to do is sniff enough packets and they can crack your meager encryption, passwords are then irrelevant. Your "secure macs" are easily cloned. With freely available tools, a measure of time, and little know-how they could gain full and unrestricted access to your network.

And perhaps that's what that F6D7 MAC is up to.

-Russ.

You should better change that. Maybe WPA would be a good idea, maybe an encrypted VPN.

WEP is unsecure and "MAC control" does not help at all.

The important point is to have enough entropy in the password.

You don't need to disable it. It would not help at all.

Yours, VB.

They're not comparable at all. WEP and WPA are encryption standards. WPA is *currently* considered uncrackable as long as the keys are sufficiently long. That will change eventually of course.

Radius is for authentication. It's a good idea to add authentication; that's a whole different discussion becuase how you implement it tells the story of how good it is If it's tied to simple text user/pass combos, it's close to useless. If it's tied to good tokens, it's nearly unassailable. Radius and the server it's tied to help you know that the person connecting is who you think, within the constraints of the authentication method you choose with it. This can give you some protection if a fully configured laptop is stolen or compromised -- but this again is a separate issue aside from what encryption you use.

Ultimate security for wireless uses WPA with long keys allowing only IPSec traffic, and VPN software clients using token authentication on the tunnels.

But it's no fun to take care of such a setup.

-Russ.

Thanks guys for your help and explanation. So WPA would be better for me, but I just read about 802.1x and Radius. Is that the best there is at this moment? And how does that work? Because I read you have to enter a Radius server IP and a Radius shared key.

What's the exact difference with WEP and WPA compared to Radius?

X-No-Archive: Yes

And the one thing he should note is that if someone is using something like a Super Cantenna, or one of many atenna designs for boosting a WiFI signal, they could be hitting his WiFi from quite a ways away. I read once that a Pringles can or a Super Cantenna can, under the right conditions, hit an access point up to 10 miles away. Whoever is hitting his access point could be doing it from up to 10 miles away.

I doubt it would be that far, as signal propagation times would become an issue with a garden variety WAP, but your point is well taken. Good antennae can boost the range significantly.

I knew an ISP that synched up some $59 linksys boxes at 28km with a pair of dishes, just for kicks while he was installing a remote tower. But they woudn't transmit data.

-Russ.