Jer

I am setting up a home wireless LAN and want ideas no the best technology to use. The plan is to put a server in my garage and have my laptop connect through a wireless PCMCIA card. The signal will have to travel through a breezeblock wall. My laptop is running out of hard drive space so it’s main purpose will be a file server. What’s the fastest standard? Is it IEEE 802.11b+ which runs at 44mbps? What sort of speeds am I looking at realistically considering it will be through concrete?
Has anyone else done something simmilar and what are your thoughts.

SJ_Skyline

Running a Wireless Lan out of our spare bedroom. Laptop with wireless PCMCIA card is fine out in the garden

(Cable modem plugs into Belkin router and then directly into PC/Server via Cat5 cable, Modem connects to the laptop wirelessly at 54Mbps with Belkin wireless PCMCIA card)

RoosterRoo

I use the Belkin 54g equipment (this works through a number of walls and on both levels of my house). I would recomend this as it Tx's and Rx's at 54Mbps opposed to 11Mbps that you would usually get - and it's back compatable with 11g equipment. The access point plugs into my router and the laptop works fine all through the house.

MattW

Jer - B standard is 11mbps, the Dlink version runs at 22mpbs though. G is 54mbps.

Concrete will not hamper speed, usual standards IIRC are 50 m indoors (i.e. throgh walls).

If you are a novice i suggest you buy PCMCIA cards, access points and cards from the same manufacterer. Just makes things easier to configure.

dharbige

Jer,

May I suggest you consider a USB wireless adaptor rather than a PCMCIA one?
The both have a sticky-out aerial bit, but a USB device can easily be transferred to a desktop PC if required.
Netgear do a funky looking one that looks similar to one of those USB storage devices. (ME111 I think)

David H.

Gedi

I have recently (past few days) posted some tips on here about securing WiFi. Might be of interest to you if you wanna search.

Be careful with wireless lans, there are so many badly configured ones out there its unreal.

you don't want your network to be the release point for an attack or malicious code!

Jer

Cheers
I am going to go with IEEE 802.11G. I am going to use 2000SBS with 2 network cards one for adsl and one that's wireless to connect to the laptop. Do I need an access point? can't I just buy a wireless PCMCIA card for the laptop and a wireless NIC for the server.
I know quite a bit about servers etc, I installed and look after the one at work but don't know to much about wireless.

Bajie

Gedi

Can you elaborate a little.
I've got wireless set up at home.
Are you talking about WEP [encription] on the Airstation [I have a Buffalo] being enabled.
I've changed passwords, setup firewalls etc but would appreciate any info on making it more secure.

Cheers
Ian

Gedi

WEP is pretty easy to crack. Depending on data volume, you can probably crack into WEP encrypted WiFi networks in a matter of minutes.

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadID=257677

Gedi

Just pulled out a few papers from a few sites I am active with:

http://neworder.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=9038 suggestions for making 2k/xp nirelwss networks more secure

http://www.dachb0den.com/projects/bs...ols/wepexp.txt Practical Exploitation of RC4 Weaknesses in WEP Environments

http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html Using the Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir Attack to Break WEP (seems to be down at the moment)

http://downloads.securityfocus.com/l...wep_attack.pdf This this is the same paper

http://neworder.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=5544 Wireless Security & Hacking

http://neworder.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=7628 WLAN attacks explained

http://neworder.box.sk/newsread.php?newsid=6076 Wireless scanning - wardriving/warchalking

part 1 http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1732 Wireless Network Policy Development
part 2 http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1735 Wireless Network Policy Development

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1102521,00.asp Security Beyond WEP

There are loads more. You might wanna consider reading some information on Kismet, Airsnort etc

Bajie

Flippin' 'Eck Tucker!

Gedi

lol, if you knew how much computer material I read, you would probably insist I was locked up. Probably averaging about 1 book and 30 papers every fortnight. That inbetween writing and hacking.

I need to get a life...lol