What is best security option for wireless router?

I live in a condo and about to go wireless. What is the best security to keep neighbors from leeching off my Wi-Fi?

Reply to
SanDiegoFunkDaddy
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WPA-PSK and a nice long password

Reply to
Yes Baby

"SanDiegoFunkDaddy" hath wroth:

Shotgun or large caliber slug shooter will work best. Bang on door. Shove gun in face of neighbor. Threaten violence if you find them on your wi-fi network. Leave. End of problem.

If that won't work, there's always encryption. The basic requirements are:

  1. A router password that's not easily guessed.
  2. A unique SSID. It can be anything like "KEEP OUT". Don't use any punctuation or weird symbols.
  3. Setup WPA-Personal or WPA2-Personal encryption.
  4. Select a WPA pass phrase that's not easily guessable. Make it long ( >20 chars)

Done. There are additional security measures that will make your life as miserable as the neighborhood hackers. The do present an additional obstacle, but if WPA encryption is used with a decent key, that's all you need. At this point, unless you use a trivial key, WPA cannot be cracked.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

A 45 caliber handgun. Or a baseball bat for a less severe beating.

Reply to
Dana

Don't use one !

Reply to
Martin²

And do NOT broadcast the SSID. So you know the name but no one else.

Reply to
- Bobb -

802.11 A - would eliminate probably 99% of them. They're just not going to have 802.11 A mode. Throw in WPA with a nice long seemingly random passphrase and you will be on your own wireless island. Of course you've got to buy all A cards as well as A access point. If it can do B and G as well turn those modes off.

Does anybody know if any laptops (Apple Mac Airport?) has 5Ghz 802.11 A capability built-in? Their Airport Extreme Access Points do.

Reply to
Alan Spicer

"- Bobb -" hath wroth:

Is that so you can insure that your neighbors land on your wi-fi radio channel or is it in order to break some connection managers that can't seem to connect to an access point without a broadcast SSID? Never mind that any user with Kismet or other sniffer can easily extract the SSID out of thin air. Great security idea that will screw up your friends and neighbors, but do nothing to slow down even a beginning script kid.

From the FAQ at: Wi-Fi Security Myths:

Hint: Security by obscurity doesn't work.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

"Alan Spicer" hath wroth:

Yep, but not for the obvious reason. It's because the most common tool, Netstumbler doesn't show whether a logged access point is responding on 2.4 or 5.7GHz. The log file entries are identical.

I have both. However, I don't have a decent 5.7GHz antenna. Seen any

5.7GHz antenna construction articles? I've seen one or two, but that it. Most hackers do live on 2.4GHz.

Wait until you try to bridge from 2.4 to 5.7GHz on the same access point? Some a/b/g boxes simply won't do it.

I don't anything about Apple laptops.

However, the current crop of laptops with Intel boards are arriving with 2915ABG or 3945ABG cards, which are dual band. The 4965AGN (MIMO) is also dual band. See a trend?

Also, 5.7GHz isn't as empty as you would expect. See:

Oh swell, site is down for a while. Maybe later. Anyway, there is quite a bit of point to point traffic on 5.7GHz and a substantial number of WiMax system:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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