Laptops - advice pleae

[namtrak]

A d-link modem/router should do the trick. You could also grab a Wireless card for the PC as well. WEP encryption and a individual MAC address should keep out 99% of the try-hards. Another simple thing, is to include a traffic monitor in your system tray. Some nerd has developed one for Internode which is great - our neighbours use our connection and this way I can keep track of their downloads. Although I suspect if you were on the new ADSL/2 packages you could lose bandwidth very quickly.

[B.J.Honeycut]

Another thing you can ALSO do so long as the Wifi Router supports it and, I believe, most do now, is to turn on tied MAC addressing. What this means is you connect your laptop to the Router (with WEP/Encryption turned on) and when it is successfully linked to it, you can set the Router to ONLY allow the MAC address of the Laptops WiFi card to connect to the router. Doing all of these makes it quite difficult for someone to hack you (though not impossible as BJ points out).

Mac addresses can easily be impersonated. Once again whilst "more secure" it's only an illusion. Under Linux it's as easiy as "ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:00:00:AA:AA:AA" or whatever you want. Under windows it's a little more clicking but still very easy. Wireless netwoking was never designed with security in mind the security was just tacked on at the end and is therefore really bad. For the geeks out there http://www.worldwidewardrive.org/

[Wayne Davy]

Yep, I know but you need to know the MAC address you want to impersonate.

[B.J.Honeycut]

Yep, I know but you need to know the MAC address you want to impersonate.

The machine has to send the mac to the router.....it can be packet sniffed out of the air just like the rest of it.