Linksys WRK54G - FINALLY working EXCEPT for work laptop - Help!

"Dana" hath wroth:

Did you remember to add this laptops wireless MAC address to the routers MAC address filter list?

Since the other laptops are setup for static IP addresses, did you assign a static IP address to the Compaq? Was it a duplicate IP?

If you use WEP, be sure to use the Hex WEP key, not the ASCII. There are some incompatibilities between different manufacturers ideas of how to convert from ASCII to Hex.

You were absolutely right! I had taken a friend's advice and done the MAC addressing for our home computers without ever really knowing WHAT I was changing. (A case of knowing just enough to be dangerous.) Now that I look at it more closely, I can see that I had given my network a specific list of who could "come in", so I shouldn't be surprised when a guest computer isn't allowed to enter. I also realize that my wireless network is also more secure than I thought. At least my neighbors can't get into my network as easily as I can to theirs.

So do you think the MAC addressing and static IP's are a normal fix for some routers? It's not hurting anything, right? And if it keeps the network stable...

Thank you for responding, and saving me much frustration.

"Dana" hath wroth:

Welcome to "Learn By Destroying(tm)".

Yep.

Not so. MAC addresses are easily spoofed. If your neighbor wanted to attack your system, they have only to sniff the traffic for authorized MAC addresses, and spoof one of them when that machine is not active.

I'm not sure what you mean by "stable", but DHCP versus static IP's has NOTHING to do with stability. With DHCP, the router will continue to assign the same IP address to a given MAC address. It will not change until perhaps the DHCP lease expires. Some routers have a "static DHCP" or "reserved DHCP" feature, that allows you to permanently assign an IP address to a specific MAC address, effectively creating a static IP address. In other words, there's not "stability" advantage to static IP's.

What I think your friend is suggesting that by turning off DHCP, security is enchanced because it is more difficult for an attacker to find a suitable IP addresses. That's rediculous because once an attacker discovers your IP address range, they can just manually assign a suitable IP address. More easily, they just clone both the MAC address and IP address of one of your existing computers. My guess is that your friend also assigned a weird IP address block and random IP address for the router inside the block.

The obstacle course theory of security does have its proponents, but I'm not one of them. I prefer to trust in WPA encryption to keep the hackers out, and not have normal users deal with the obstacles. See the security section of the FAQ:

| 1) Set up all your connections with static IP's. "Obtain IP | automatically" never seemed to keep us connected. The only fix was to | UNPLUG the router to reset it several times a day. Don't know what the | reset button is supposed to do!

If other things are not working, this certainly won't work. Normally it should work fine. But if you're getting connected to other networks maybe you're getting IPs from them, instead, and that could be part of the problem. Do you have an SSID specified for every machine/device?

| 2) Going to the linksys configuration website 192.168.1.1, in the | wireless security tab, enable MAC addressing. We then programmed in | all the MAC addresses of the router, both LAN connections, and the | wireless card (we got these "physical addresses" by going to each | computer's DOS prompt and typing "ipconfig/all" according to my notes).

Doable. But that's the hard way.

| 3) For some reason, in the "wireless network connection properties" | screen, if I click the "Use Windows to configure my connection" option, | connectivity seems to go down hill. If I unclick it and allow the | Linksys Wireless G software to handle everything, I have fewer | problems.

They made a mistake when they typed in the lable for that option. It should have read "Use Windows' brain dead concepts of networking to misconfigure my connection". Windows is one system I have found that explicit configuration is generally required.