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rockchick
13-Mar-07, 14:09
Perhaps this question isn't appropriate for this forum, but I thought it might be the best place to start...

If you run an unsecured broadband wireless connection, is there any way (other than the drop in speed) that you can tell whether someone else is using your broadband connection?

Cheers
Rockchick

jamieS
13-Mar-07, 16:06
depending on the wirless router that you use it can sometimes tell you if there is additonal connections to it, also if someone was using it and picking up one of your IP Addresses from the DHCP it should tell you that information as well.

An easy way to secure your wireless router without using WPA/WEP Keys is to restict what MAC Addresses are aloud to connect to it. This is the method I use. This way even if they figured out your Key they couldn't get passed the MAC Address as these are unique to each NIC

blueivy
14-Mar-07, 12:11
Perhaps this question isn't appropriate for this forum, but I thought it might be the best place to start...

If you run an unsecured broadband wireless connection, is there any way (other than the drop in speed) that you can tell whether someone else is using your broadband connection?

Cheers
Rockchick

Hi RockChick,

It all depends on which router you use and therefore which features it has.

There are two easy ways to tell that most routers will have:


Check the DHCP addresses that the router has issued out.
Generally the router will show the IP addresses that have been leased and the Network name of the computer that has requested it. You can then see if that name matches one of your computers. This is very very easily defeated though.
If your router supports MAC address filtering then you could look at which MAC addresses have recently accessed the router (as the router usually stores these to make it easier for you to apply MAC address filtering).The best way to stop somebody using your connection is simply to secure using WPA, or if your router/cards don't support anything else, WEP.

WEP encryption is very poor, puts an additional load on both the router CPU and your computer CPU and is very easily cracked. WPA encryption is done much faster as the card/router (generally) does the encryption/decryption via a dedicated chip taking the load off of your computer. It is also much more secure due to the way it works.

The best way to secure your wireless network is to employ a combination of no DHCP (ie. used fixed IP's), WPA and MAC address filtering. The most secure wireless network will be switched off ....

blueivy
14-Mar-07, 12:17
depending on the wirless router that you use it can sometimes tell you if there is additonal connections to it, also if someone was using it and picking up one of your IP Addresses from the DHCP it should tell you that information as well.

An easy way to secure your wireless router without using WPA/WEP Keys is to restict what MAC Addresses are aloud to connect to it. This is the method I use. This way even if they figured out your Key they couldn't get passed the MAC Address as these are unique to each NIC

Hi jamieS,

I saw that you're now BANNED so for everybody else reading this there are a couple of points that's he/she has brought up.

You can't secure your wireless network without using encryption.

MAC address filtering allows particular network cards to access your router based on what is called a MAC address. Every network card has a different MAC address so even two cards from the same manufacturer, made at the same factory on the same day have two different addresses. However this address is stored in card and can therefore be changed.

If you are purely using MAC address filtering on your network, anybody with even a slight knowledge of networking will be on your network within minutes - all I have to do is find out the MAC address that your are using - this is very simple as the traffic between your PC and the router is not encrypted all I have to do is 'sniff' the network traffic and get your MAC address - change the MAC address on my computer's network card to match yours and bang, I can connect. That would take a few minutes.

The way to secure your wireless network is very very easy. See the post above for more information.

rockchick
15-Mar-07, 07:49
Thanks for the replies, I've got a better idea about this now.

Cheers!