Re: [BAWUG] WLAN Privacy Issues

[Greg Troutman]

Stefan Schueller wrote:
> A more simple way is to use a linksys BEFW11S4. See my site
> http://www.hartwellroad.net/about.html . The BEFW11S4 or any other
> DSL/cable type router will let you do NAT. This way you can setup
> local networks that can't be seen outside the BEF.
>
> My neighbors all have their own networks and connect to my house for
> the internet. No one from the outside can connect to their LANs
> because they are behind the BEF which is using bogus local IP
> addresses.

Well that's pretty much exactly what I said, except you bought a
dedicated router instead of upgrading and clicking or typing stuff in an
existing network device and you turned on NAT since you only want to
service outbound web surfing. The more complex network scheme I
proposed assumed his 'virtual networks' might want some inter-network
capability, like community bulletin boards, cache servers, ftp servers, and such, using firewalling techniques rather than NAT, to isolate....

All current versions of Windows, MacOS, Linux, or the BSDs will do
everything the BEF does with only a small effort, assuming the PC has a
wired ethernet card and a wireless card installed. In Windows
98/2000/XP, for example, after you plug in the crossover cable from the
WAP11 to a regular ethernet port and get your wireless card running, you
tell it to 'allow other users to share this connection' or something
like that, which is Microsoft-speak for 'do dhcp for the local network
and route to the internet with NAT just like a Linksys BEF'... It's a
straight drop-in replacement for the BEF on your client side diagram,
and it might also be the primary desktop computer for your neighbor to
surf porn through your DSL.

A used 486 computer with a wireless card is about the same cost as a BEF
and can also act as a cacheing proxy server, mp3 server, or some other
useful function if you don't want your desktops doing dual duty as
routers like they do on my network.

My feeling is, I need radios and antennas to do wireless networking, I
already have routers, hubs, switches, firewalls, load-balancers,
servers, etc.

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