Unplugged

by John Doan
June 15, 2005

Are you Wi-Fi'd?

One of the fastest growing trends in the home computing market is wireless networking. Today, you can buy laptops, MP3 players, video game consoles, media receivers and even refrigerators that are "Wi-Fi" ready. This allows you to access the Internet, your music and photo collections or chat with someone while moving freely throughout your house, both inside and out. While the convenience of not having to run network cabling, otherwise known as "Cat5 or Cat6," throughout your house or apartment is quite appealing, the potential downside may make you wish you never cashed your Best Buy gift card in for a wireless router, also called an Access Point.

What is it?

"Wi-Fi" is a trademarked term used to define a set of standards related to wireless local area networks. Most familiar among these standards is the transmission of radio transmissions within the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz bands. These represent 802.11b/g and 802.11a respectively. Differentiating these standards is the maximum data bandwidth that can be transmitted and received called throughput. 802.11b is capable of 11Mbps while 802.11a/g are capable of 54Mbps. So what does this all mean to you? For most people, it doesn't mean much. Unless you are copying your MP3 collection from your desktop to your laptop over a Wi-Fi connection, you won't even notice the difference between b and g. Otherwise stated, your downloads aren't necessarily any faster on a wired versus wireless network because the bottleneck is your DSL or cable Internet connection, which provide approximately 256Kbps to 3Mbps in throughput.

Safe Sex

Safe computing today is arguably metaphorical to "safe sex" practices of the early eighties. Limiting the exposure of your computer to other computers is good practice to prevent virus outbreaks. While most viruses are merely uncomfortable, others may teach you a lesson of Magic Johnson size proportions. Internet abstinence is the safest, but also the most boring. So what does this have to do with wireless networking? Everything. Every consumer grade Access Point ships as a default router that allows up to 254 computing devices to connect to your Internet connection. You wouldn't let 253 strangers share an intimate moment with you, would you? Maybe you would, but that's just begging to contract something nasty. Allowing others to connect to your wireless network may open up all of the files on your computers. If you have any files on your computer that you wouldn't want to share with your neighbors (i.e. personal finances, video or photo collection) then you better make sure you lock down your wireless network.

Good Citizenship

Maybe you don't care that your neighbors are surfing your Internet connection. Perhaps you don't care about the information stored on your computer. No matter what your excuse, you owe it to society to be a responsible Wi-Fi Access Point owner. Leaving your Access Point open is similar to leaving a loaded gun in your mailbox. Maybe your neighbor doesn't know it's in there but if they did, they could use it in some illegal ways. Your network may be the launching pad for organized hacking, phishing, spam and so on. On a lighter note, your neighbor may just decide to place his pirated MP3 and video collection on your computer and share it out to the world. So what if you still don't care about securing your Wi-Fi network? You may be personally liable and face criminal or civil penalties. When the RIAA looked to prosecute and collect damages for copyright violators, they subpoenaed Internet Service Providers for names of customers who were sharing files through the Internet. Not downloading them! Plausible deniability is not a defense. Remember the grandmother who paid fines because her granddaughter was swapping files on her computer?

How Do I Secure It?

Hopefully this article was good enough to relay the importance of safe Wi-Fi computing practices. There are a few relatively simple things you can do to secure your Access Point during the setup process.

- WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) - this doesn't necessarily stop someone from gaining access to your Access Point, but it does make it a little more difficult. By assigning a WEP key to your Access Point, you are essentially requiring a pass code to connect. If you occasionally change the WEP key, you make it more difficult for someone to crack the code and have permanent access.

- MAC Filtering - A MAC address is essentially the serial number for a Wi-Fi Card. These are usually labeled on the Wi-Fi card and look like six pairs of characters usually separated by dashes or colons (i.e. 00:07:0E:9C:50). By applying a MAC filter in the Access Point, you restrict what cards are allowed to connect. Because the chances of two cards having the same MAC address are millions to one, someone would have to know and spoof yours in order to connect.

- DHCP Limiting/DHCP Range - Remember we said a wireless access point ships with the ability to allow up to 254 devices to connect to it? Most Access Points allow you to choose how many IP addresses it will assign. Because each device you attach to your network, whether wired or wireless, requires an IP address to exist on the network, you should limit the total number of IP addresses to the number of computing devices you have. For example, if you have two computers, an X-Box and a Wi-Fi enabled Palm Pilot; you need four IP addresses if all of them are going to share your Internet connection simultaneously. Your access point may allow you to specify a total of four IP addresses, or you may need to define it as an IP range of 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.4.

If you are unfamiliar with these terms or don't feel confident configuring your router, here are a few places you can go for help.

- You company computer guy- Befriend him two-three weeks prior or bribe him with old computer parts.

- Family member - if you don't have someone in your family that is somewhat familiar with computer networking at this point you are either bridging "Halfsquare and Square" or you live in a mining town.

- Neighbor kid - offer up free high speed over the summer if he helps prevent the other neighbor kids from hacking your stuff.

- Local computer store - usually only take cash so use this as a last resort.

However you choose to secure your Wi-Fi access point is up to you. Whatever you do, don't do nothing. Today's criminals aren't walking into banks to get the money; they are stealing it from you and me by exploiting our incompetence in technology.

If you are interested in learning more about securing your wireless network, you can visit the Wi-Fi Alliance site at http://www.wi-fi.org/.