What Sort of Board
Moderator: ElTaco
What Sort of Board
utilizes a Tech moderator who doesn't have home internet access? Besides this one. Here's my issue I've a small wireless home network (2 desktops, 1 laptop) The desktops run XP Pro and the laptop Win 2000. I'm using a Netgear router and cards. The laptop never loses connection, the desktop is totally flakey. It will hold a connection for days at a time then drop it for days at a time. All this occurs with no changes to the machines. I've swapped out the NIC, I've got the latest drivers and firmware, I've changed the blinker fluid. In short I've tried all the ideas I've read about on the bad internets. Any ideas? Would installing a new card from USR or D-Link solve my problems
If you have doubts about his abilities, you haven't been paying much attention, brah.utilizes a Tech moderator who doesn't have home internet access? Besides this one.
King Crimson wrote:anytime you have a smoke tunnel and it's not Judas Priest in the mid 80's....watch out.
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ElTaco
- Networking Securely
- Posts: 907
- Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:12 pm
- Location: Northern VA
- Contact:
Thanks for your vote of confidence there Goby. Don't you have some internet messageboards to spellcheck?
Wireless networks are still relatively flakey so that means that little things might disconnect you from the network. There are however, certain tricks you can try to keep you connected.
As junkman pointed out, PCs should probably be wired if at all possible. They just don't reap the real benefits of wireless since you don't move them around so its easier to just wire them in and viola, they won't get disconnected. There are certain cases where thats not optimal so lets say that you are too lazy to run a little cable in your house and will insist on keeping them wireless.
I would next check the signal. Usually when people are too lazy to run wire, its because they are living in a multi level house. If you know anything about antennas and radio signals, you will know that you can't necessarily just plop a wireless router in the middle of your house and expect it to work on all 2 or 3 levels. If you aren't familiar, 802.11 antennas are polarized and while standing vertical to the ground, the radio signal will go out horizontal (again to the ground). Therefore, depending on the construction of your house, you may or may not get any type of a decent connection on the 2nd or 3rd floor of your house. One option is to turn one antenna so that it is horizontal to the ground and sends its signal out vertical therefore improving the connection on the floors above and below. Just one more reason that your laptop might work a little better is that wireless PCMCIA cards actually have two antennas built into them. Therefore they can pick up a better connection either way. Incidentally, you may want to turn the external antenna horizontal to the ground if the wireless router is not on the same floor.
You could upgrade the antennas that came with the router to something a little more powerful. This is probably a waste of money but if you just need another 5% to 10% more power, this could be a solution. A better solution is probably to go out and purchase a wireless AP. These little guys can act as a wireless Bridge, forwarding any wireless signal from the laptop to the router and vice versa.
Did we mention that you should probably just wire in your PCs? Considering that most homes don't put a PC in each room, you can probably put at least one PC close enough to the router that it will be wired in, then just make sure your other PC and Laptop have a good signal.
Now the last possible reason for this type of a problem would be if someone was attacking your router. I doubt that this is whats going on, even more so because your laptop stays connected, but one popular attack on routers/wireless networks is to send a 'disconnect all' packet that will force the router to disconnect all users. Then when you reconnect, the attacker(s) can sniff out vital information, like your SSID, IP, user information and such.
Last but not least, if you improve your connection by increasing the signal power (with a stronger antenna or with an additional AP) I would be careful to test the signal leak outside of your house so that next week you aren't running into the same problem because your neighbor's 15 year old hacker wannabe son, or perhaps a technical guru without an internet connection at home decides to use yours internet.
-ET
Wireless networks are still relatively flakey so that means that little things might disconnect you from the network. There are however, certain tricks you can try to keep you connected.
As junkman pointed out, PCs should probably be wired if at all possible. They just don't reap the real benefits of wireless since you don't move them around so its easier to just wire them in and viola, they won't get disconnected. There are certain cases where thats not optimal so lets say that you are too lazy to run a little cable in your house and will insist on keeping them wireless.
I would next check the signal. Usually when people are too lazy to run wire, its because they are living in a multi level house. If you know anything about antennas and radio signals, you will know that you can't necessarily just plop a wireless router in the middle of your house and expect it to work on all 2 or 3 levels. If you aren't familiar, 802.11 antennas are polarized and while standing vertical to the ground, the radio signal will go out horizontal (again to the ground). Therefore, depending on the construction of your house, you may or may not get any type of a decent connection on the 2nd or 3rd floor of your house. One option is to turn one antenna so that it is horizontal to the ground and sends its signal out vertical therefore improving the connection on the floors above and below. Just one more reason that your laptop might work a little better is that wireless PCMCIA cards actually have two antennas built into them. Therefore they can pick up a better connection either way. Incidentally, you may want to turn the external antenna horizontal to the ground if the wireless router is not on the same floor.
You could upgrade the antennas that came with the router to something a little more powerful. This is probably a waste of money but if you just need another 5% to 10% more power, this could be a solution. A better solution is probably to go out and purchase a wireless AP. These little guys can act as a wireless Bridge, forwarding any wireless signal from the laptop to the router and vice versa.
Did we mention that you should probably just wire in your PCs? Considering that most homes don't put a PC in each room, you can probably put at least one PC close enough to the router that it will be wired in, then just make sure your other PC and Laptop have a good signal.
Now the last possible reason for this type of a problem would be if someone was attacking your router. I doubt that this is whats going on, even more so because your laptop stays connected, but one popular attack on routers/wireless networks is to send a 'disconnect all' packet that will force the router to disconnect all users. Then when you reconnect, the attacker(s) can sniff out vital information, like your SSID, IP, user information and such.
Last but not least, if you improve your connection by increasing the signal power (with a stronger antenna or with an additional AP) I would be careful to test the signal leak outside of your house so that next week you aren't running into the same problem because your neighbor's 15 year old hacker wannabe son, or perhaps a technical guru without an internet connection at home decides to use yours internet.
-ET
The router is with the main computer in the family room, the wireless desktop in my bedroom (essential for pron enjoyment)Junkman wrote:Serious questions:
1. Why run wireless on the desktop. Run the wire, the desktop doesn't move and you get faster internet.
Rebooting the router doesn't helpJunkman wrote:2. Next time it flakes, reboot your router and see if it sees it next time.
If they are next to eachother, then using anything other than a wire to connect them is stupid.Goby wrote:The laptop when sitting on the same desk as the desktop has no trouble with the signal and doesn't drop the connection. That's why I suspect the culprit is Netgear's product (works great with the Win 2000 laptop, lousy with the XP Pro)
Have you updated the drivers for cards and updated the firmware for the router?
I agree, they were only next to each other to eliminate the weak signal hypothesis.Junkman wrote:If they are next to eachother, then using anything other than a wire to connect them is stupid.Goby wrote:The laptop when sitting on the same desk as the desktop has no trouble with the signal and doesn't drop the connection. That's why I suspect the culprit is Netgear's product (works great with the Win 2000 laptop, lousy with the XP Pro)
Junkman wrote: Have you updated the drivers for cards and updated the firmware for the router?
ET - Do you recommend another encryption approach?Goby covered this on Sun. Jan 16th when he wrote:I've got the latest drivers and firmware
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ElTaco
- Networking Securely
- Posts: 907
- Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2005 4:12 pm
- Location: Northern VA
- Contact:
Warning: Technical information.
I guess the question is, what exactly are you trying to get out of the encryption?
Protection for your traffic between your laptop/PC and the router, Authentication to your network, speed or all of the above?
WEP is not implemented correctly. 128 bit WEP for all intense and purposes can be just about impossible to crack, unless of course it was implemented by pre-cisco owned Linksys who decided to cut corners on the encryption. This applies to many other companies as well. Netgear makes decent products, but lets just say it does not in any way compares to Cisco. (For one, I hate the single antenna design. There is a really good reason to have two antennas, as I described above, but that has nothing to do with encryption). Also if you intend to sniff/wardrive, don't by netgear cards for your laptop.
So with the 802.11b & g WEP implementation you can either secure your connection or you can authenticate or Both. The problem is that if you do both, its actually easy to crack your encryption, because your encryption key is no longer random. In other words, if you do shared key authentication, the router will use that same key for your encryption. If you just enable WEP without any authentication, your traffic is really secure, unless you use an older linksys router which didn't implement the encryption algorythm. If you only have WEP as a choice, one option is to abondon it and use a VPN tunnel instead. Problem is that while routers allow for VPN traffic, most of them aren't set up to firewall you on the wireless side. (most companies use VPN to secure their wireless networks.)
WPA is the way to go if you have that option. Problem is any time you encrypt your traffic, you will lose speed. Your only real solution to that problem is to buy a business class wireless AP or router for a little more so that it has a dedicated chip or a faster chip to support encryption. You might check out Ebay for a Cisco SOHO wireless router. New they go for around 300, but you can probably get it much cheaper used on ebay. You can also pick up a lot newer D-link router which is probably one of the best SOHO (non cisco) routers on the market. These babies not only try to give you the latest and greatest wired and wireless technology, but Dlink is also well known for quality in the wireless arena.
WPA seperates authentication and encryption so you don't have stupid crap like shared key authentication. More importantly perhaps, it allows the use of an authentication server that is seperate so if you have windows 2000 server or 2003 server, you can use the built in authentication services (IIS) to manage your wireless authentication at home (or more importantly at work). Yes I realize that this is perhaps an overkill for home, but I'm just sayin, if you were really concerned about that 16 year old dork living next door that never shows his face outside. Even if you have the router authenticate you, WPA uses pre-shared authentication so its using a password for authentication and then random keys for the encryption. In other words, even if by some miracle the 16 year old kid cracks your password to get on the network, because you used your wife's birthday as a password, he will not be able to see the animal pron you are downloading.
WPA is better in every sense of the word then WEP and I would certainly recommend that everyone use it, however when it comes to speed, all encryption scemes will slow you down. My recommendation is to either get one of the 108mb/s wireless routers (and equivalent cards) or to buy a high end wireless router that is made to handle encryption without losing the speed.
-ET
I guess the question is, what exactly are you trying to get out of the encryption?
Protection for your traffic between your laptop/PC and the router, Authentication to your network, speed or all of the above?
WEP is not implemented correctly. 128 bit WEP for all intense and purposes can be just about impossible to crack, unless of course it was implemented by pre-cisco owned Linksys who decided to cut corners on the encryption. This applies to many other companies as well. Netgear makes decent products, but lets just say it does not in any way compares to Cisco. (For one, I hate the single antenna design. There is a really good reason to have two antennas, as I described above, but that has nothing to do with encryption). Also if you intend to sniff/wardrive, don't by netgear cards for your laptop.
So with the 802.11b & g WEP implementation you can either secure your connection or you can authenticate or Both. The problem is that if you do both, its actually easy to crack your encryption, because your encryption key is no longer random. In other words, if you do shared key authentication, the router will use that same key for your encryption. If you just enable WEP without any authentication, your traffic is really secure, unless you use an older linksys router which didn't implement the encryption algorythm. If you only have WEP as a choice, one option is to abondon it and use a VPN tunnel instead. Problem is that while routers allow for VPN traffic, most of them aren't set up to firewall you on the wireless side. (most companies use VPN to secure their wireless networks.)
WPA is the way to go if you have that option. Problem is any time you encrypt your traffic, you will lose speed. Your only real solution to that problem is to buy a business class wireless AP or router for a little more so that it has a dedicated chip or a faster chip to support encryption. You might check out Ebay for a Cisco SOHO wireless router. New they go for around 300, but you can probably get it much cheaper used on ebay. You can also pick up a lot newer D-link router which is probably one of the best SOHO (non cisco) routers on the market. These babies not only try to give you the latest and greatest wired and wireless technology, but Dlink is also well known for quality in the wireless arena.
WPA seperates authentication and encryption so you don't have stupid crap like shared key authentication. More importantly perhaps, it allows the use of an authentication server that is seperate so if you have windows 2000 server or 2003 server, you can use the built in authentication services (IIS) to manage your wireless authentication at home (or more importantly at work). Yes I realize that this is perhaps an overkill for home, but I'm just sayin, if you were really concerned about that 16 year old dork living next door that never shows his face outside. Even if you have the router authenticate you, WPA uses pre-shared authentication so its using a password for authentication and then random keys for the encryption. In other words, even if by some miracle the 16 year old kid cracks your password to get on the network, because you used your wife's birthday as a password, he will not be able to see the animal pron you are downloading.
WPA is better in every sense of the word then WEP and I would certainly recommend that everyone use it, however when it comes to speed, all encryption scemes will slow you down. My recommendation is to either get one of the 108mb/s wireless routers (and equivalent cards) or to buy a high end wireless router that is made to handle encryption without losing the speed.
-ET
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Trolling for Dollars
- Elwood
- Posts: 123
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 5:32 pm
If your connection is getting dropped, just use the neighbors.ElTaco wrote:
(Fatsak says that now you are just bein silly.)
I think you playin with his dog at night might have tipped him off to your beastiality tendencies, however, I'm sure if your neighbor is too stupid to secure his wireless network, he won't know how to crack your wep.
-ET
Bonus is you're not paying for it...
Trolling for Dollars wrote:If your connection is getting dropped, just use the neighbors.ElTaco wrote:
(Fatsak says that now you are just bein silly.)
I think you playin with his dog at night might have tipped him off to your beastiality tendencies, however, I'm sure if your neighbor is too stupid to secure his wireless network, he won't know how to crack your wep.
-ET
Bonus is you're not paying for it...
Sincerly,
m2
Yeah, ET has helped me in the past when it comes to computer shit, and is more than qualified, and is the right choice to be the mod here.
m2