Stan Glasoe wrote:

On Friday 09 September 2005 8:17 pm, Don Parris wrote:

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I'd like to setup at least two, maybe two boxes and a Dell Latitude C610 laptop on a wireless LAN - preferably with SUSE 10.0 (I'm playing with beta 4 now). Would anyone be willing to suggest brand/models? The laptop has an ethernet port, so I'll obviously need a PC Card (PCMCIA?) wireless adapter. I do have a 4-port USB hub if wireless LAN cards work o.k. via USB. I know there have been some issues using USB ethernet adapters under Linux, and assume that applies to wireless as well.

Eventually, I plan to convert the remaining 8 or 9 boxes over to wireless as well (total of 12 systems). I assume I need a hub/switch as well, or just the router? It appears that I might be well served to pick up a LinkSys 4-port router for my Internet connection. The only 16-port wireless router I saw (on first glance) runs over USD $300.00! Pehaps I could use one box to route the rest into the LinkSys. Of course, the 4-port would suffice for now, since I won't likely be moving to wireless all at once. Yeah, I know. I don't know anything about choosing LAN equipment. Anyway...

Thanks for the input.

Wireless is not a secure protocol unless you ssh or vpn all connections over it. Wireless range is also tricky depending on the environment (outdoors is best, indoors can be less than 10 feet through walls, etc) and the power of the antennas.

Well, I've got an ADSL modem I use to connect to the Internet. Should I use a box between my router my DSL modem? IOW, my DSL modem is not wireless. This may seem trivial to you, but I'd rather be sure I understand it before I do something stupid. ;-)

If you start with a Linksys WRT54g style wireless router/firewall/switch you'll get 4 switched Ethernet ports, the firewall and router plus the wireless access point. Plus there are other Linux based firmwares available to turn it into a more capable Linux security device with lots of cool features. Nice first line of defense in a layered security LAN.

If you need more than 4 wired ports, add a dedicated 4,8,16 port 10/100/1000 Ethernet switch off of it. That way you can segment and modularize for speed if there are some gigabit needs in the LAN.

This LAN is more experimental than serious. However, going wireless could make the whole LAN more portable for demos, etc.

As far as wireless Ethernet adapters of the USB variety I'm curious as to what others say. USB ports aren't always in what I would think are good radio reception areas. Some wireless cards have the capability to add a cable to the antenna so it can be placed further from the desktop and in a better reception area.

Stan

I'll plan to stick to standard equipment for now. Thanks, Stan! You really responded on a level I needed. Any warnings on the NICs?

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 08:21:47 +0200, you wrote:

Doug McGarrett wrote:

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At 09:17 PM 9/9/2005 -0400, Don Parris (webdev@matheteuo.org) wrote:

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I'd like to setup at least two, maybe two boxes and a Dell Latitude C610 laptop on a wireless LAN - preferably with SUSE 10.0 (I'm playing with beta 4 now).

(snip) Wireless is reckless! Anyone driving by the house, as well as close neighbors, can tap into your wireless network. Using a small Yagi antenna, people as far as a quarter mile away may be able to get in. The antenna is readily available from outfits like Cushcraft. A wired LAN is much safer.

While this is true for unencrypted WLAN's, I doubt if this claim holds water for the serious encryption technology modern wireless hardware offers.

You must be joking. 'serious encryption technology'? Please - I've seen systems that were theoretically encrypted hacked in less than an hour, and most people don't enable the encryption anyway... I recommend against wireless LANs to all of my clients in the strongest terms possible. It's not worth it. Just for demo purposes I have some special software (freely available, downloaded from the internet) loaded on my palm. I've hacked hospitals, libraries, HMOs.. you name it - sitting in their waiting rooms, in front of their IT managers - who generally turn white and leave abruptly, returning shortly with signed contracts. Mike- -- Mornings: Evolution in action. Only the grumpy will survive. -- Please note - Due to the intense volume of spam, we have installed site-wide spam filters at catherders.com. If email from you bounces, try non-HTML, non-encoded, non-attachments.

Jos, On Saturday 10 September 2005 06:09, Jos van Kan wrote:

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You must be joking. 'serious encryption technology'? Please - I've seen systems that were theoretically encrypted hacked in less than an hour, and most people don't enable the encryption anyway... I recommend against wireless LANs to all of my clients in the strongest terms possible. It's not worth it.

Sigh. For crying out loud, we were talking about a home-wlan and whether the neighbors would get in. Not about a bank or hospital and professional hackers. I think a home-wlan is safe enough *with encryption on*. You'd also be protected by the numbers and by the fact that it requires a physical act (not just a script that you can send out to attack millions) to get into your neighborhood and a lot of effort to obtain what? Your creditcard number that would be blocked within a couple of hours. Good grief, let's get real.

Save your breath. We had the "you must quadruple-erase the contents of your swap partitions 'cause the CIA/NSA/criminal-next-door has magic overwritten disk sector reading hardware" counterpart to this paranoia-fest about a week ago. I think some people like to worry and be scared.

Jos van Kan

Randall Schulz

On Saturday September 10 2005 9:09 am, Jos van Kan wrote:

Michael W Cocke wrote:

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While this is true for unencrypted WLAN's, I doubt if this claim holds water for the serious encryption technology modern wireless hardware offers.

You must be joking. 'serious encryption technology'? Please - I've seen systems that were theoretically encrypted hacked in less than an hour, and most people don't enable the encryption anyway... I recommend against wireless LANs to all of my clients in the strongest terms possible. It's not worth it.

Sigh. For crying out loud, we were talking about a home-wlan and whether the neighbors would get in. Not about a bank or hospital and professional hackers. I think a home-wlan is safe enough *with encryption on*. You'd also be protected by the numbers and by the fact that it requires a physical act (not just a script that you can send out to attack millions) to get into your neighborhood and a lot of effort to obtain what? Your creditcard number that would be blocked within a couple of hours. Good grief, let's get real.

If you use 802.11g cards (or upgraded 'b' cards) with WPA (or better still WPA2) and an authentication server, which is usually called "enterprise mode" WPA, then you will have acceptable security. You do not want to use WEP, the older weak encryption scheme supported by the 'b' cards, and to which the above warnings do apply. Defence in depth mandates that the wireless traffic pass through a firewall. Set it up like a DMZ -- which is pretty easy to do using SuSEfirewall. Have fun with it. There is lots of information on the web about setting these things up. It is a lot more fun than running cables, and with the technology now available it can be as secure as you want (need) it to be. Charly Baker

Doug McGarrett wrote:

Wireless is reckless! Anyone driving by the house, as well as close neighbors, can tap into your wireless network. Using a small Yagi antenna, people as far as a quarter mile away may be able to get in. The antenna is readily available from outfits like Cushcraft. A wired LAN is much safer.

Unless you take necessary precautions. On mine, should someone manage to break WEP, they'd then be up against my firewall, which can only be penetrated using SSH or VPN.