Joey and all: As far as I am concerned, if you use wireless, that is radio frequency communications, the signal is available to any receiver within the area of transmission. I know this from my experience as a radio amateur, ham.
No matter what you do it is available. Now another person mentioned what was happening. The spread spectrum now being used on cell phones was first given to the US government during the second world war. However, it was by a person leaving Germany and she was just a singer. I could describe how it works but not now. And maybe my understanding is not up todate. However, be careful Now some say it is too difficult and costly for the average Joe-anna to do. Well bless by soul, some time ago picking up printer stuff was not easy, making counterfeit money was not easy. The good guys made a lot of conterfeit money during the was, and so did the bad guys. So again, all I am saying is that we have to be very aware and vigilant. Chris > Hello Again All, > I am a bit over protective with my security on my WLan: > I live on a small side street (.25 mile long) 3.5 miles from > the center of town. There are no neighbors within reach of my wireless > lan, and in fact I have issues connecting occasionally with the laptop > in the car in my driveway. Signal is completely non existant at the > road end of the driveway. > Although I allow the SSID to be transmitted, I have WPA-SKA > enabled, along with MAC filtering. > I have had no known hack attempts on this, then again, I have > never had a reason to suspect one, therefore no reason to check. > I have found issues with various wireless gear, such as an XBox > adapter when trying to use encryption (in that case WEP) but a MAC > filter is an absolute must. The MAC filter will keep someone from > connecting, and either WEP (which can be broken relatively easily) or > WPA-SKA will prevent the wireless signals from being transmitted > without encryption, so someone cannot run a packet sniffer and monitor > your wireless lan without connecting. > MACs can be cloned, WEP broken, WPA-SKA broken if you catch > someone just signing on - but its all about slowing down the > incidental / casual hacker - the serious one cannot be blocked, but > slowed down. > Incidently, I did install Mepis on my ex Girlfriends laptop, > and it installed correctly, but the Linksys 802.11b card she was using > (forget the model number) was not compatible or had no usable driver. > Ended up going back to Windows on it, as she couldn't live without her > wireless and the option of buying another card was outside her > financial grasp (poor college student) - that was my brief WLan > experience with Mepis, but its fully installed on my desktop at home, > and it is the most stable OS I've EVER run. I cannot recall any times > when it has crashed when it wasn't my fault (ie knocking a hard drive > cable loose). > Just my thoughts! > Also - Mepis has an excellent support board - almost everything > about the OS can be found on the Newbie section believe it or not - > and it has a built in packet updating tool. Name escapes me at the > moment - but I have it at home if needed. > cya, Joey
