Need Wirless Network Help
 

We have wireless internet provided by our Apartment, but it blows.

So we bought roadrunner and bought our own Wirless router, a Linksys model WRT54G. The problem is everyone else in the area is logging onto our setup and is killing our speed.

We want to set up a password requirement when connecting to it to keep these people out, but the linksys site doesnt say how to do this. Can anyone help?

Turn on the WEP encryption option...you can use a "password" (it's really a hash) to set up a key.

Anyone tying to logon will need the key.

Ok I'm not very computer savy with routers, so could you explain that a little better?

A few quick steps that should ensure success.

1) Set up WEP like Lebell said. Somewhere in the options you should be able to generate a password based on a passphrase. A hash makes sense (thanks Lebell). So make sure 128 bit is selected, and type in a password. Then do the same thing on your wifi card. The only thing is that sometimes the passphrase thing doesn't play nice between devices. I had to manually tpe in the hash on my laptop's Atheros card so it could connect to my Netgear router.

2) Change your router's SSID. You look pretty noobish with a network named Linksys, plus it's inviting to freeloaders. Change i to something non-obvious (mine is from Japanese mythology) and tell your router to stop broadcasting its SSID.

3) Change your password on the router! What's your password right now? Admin? Password? Linksys? If I know it, so does Kevin Mitnick Jr. down the hall.

That should do it for now.

I know what SSID is, but my question is if I disable the broadcasting of it will my roommates still be able to find it?

I know the password change, that's always the first done... I'm not new with computers, only routers.

Log onto your router and poke around for the different settings. The address for your router can be found in your manual or on the website for your router.

Tell them what you renamed it as. I don't think they'll be able to see it at all until they tell their card to connect to that SSID.

Well I figured an easy way, I just blocked all computers except those we manually type in the MAC address to.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Just remember that that's what you did once you get a new wifi device. ;)
Three hours later... "Oh, we enabled MAC filtering, remember?"

MAC filtering, disabling the SSID broadcast+renaming and 128 bit encryption with WEP should be used with all wireless devices. MAC filtering almost ensures your security, but taking the 5 minutes to add the other two is even better.

My laptop can see 3 networks on it's list.. 2 of which aren't mine, and both of which still have the default passwords on the routers. :(

Not to be a stickler, but to someone who is really trying to get in a MAC address block is not going to stop him. All those packets are going out over the air, all they have to do is watch them for a bit, see which MAC it allows and boom any good card lets you change your MAC now.

WEP is better, but we had a tech forum at work just a short while ago and there are many programs that are out there that can crack a WEP password in 30 minutes. Yes 30 minutes. And all they have to do is watch the traffic you are sending about in the air.

WPA is better than WEP, but I believe its still crackable. I am not familiar with LEAP as its Cisco router centric.

But at the least do what everyone is suggesting, change your name, stop broadcasting your SSID if you can, and setup WEP, that way at least you have tried to lock the door.

Unless things have changed, you need quite a few "interesting" packets for the cracking software to work. You might be able to get these packets from a large business in 30 minutes, but from an apartment? I dunno. Besides, these people haven't shown themselves to be crackers (yet), just freeloaders.

Yeah this is just a college apartment. I'm not too worried about hacking, I just wanted to keep out the freeloaders for sapping our bandwidth. As I said our apartment provides wireless for "free"... but it blows so about 1/4th of the apts get their own internet, and the other 3/4 spend their time trying to sneak onto them.