WIFI question

[Quigley Brown]

I hope I can ask this here...I can't seem to find an answer anywhere else. I'll be moving to a new apartment soon and the owner of the house (who lives below) says I can connect to his wifi (which is nice of him). What do I need to do to enable my desktop PC? Thanks!

 

[Creeping Past]

Find the name he uses in the wifi list and log on. If he's got a password, you'll need that too.

And keep it clean.

 

[Tomasso]

If your computer is WiFi enabled then refer to the post above. If not, you'll need a WiFi card.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

also make sure it is secure

 

[Talbot]

^^^^^^Absolutely.

Ask him if he has a password for his network. If not anyone nearby can access his computer and yours. Its called Wireless Encription Protocol (WEP) in windows techie speak. Its not hard to do and he will thank you for it.

Once you set up WEP, the network will recognise your computer - you don't have to keep entering passwords all the time.

 

[Quigley Brown]

Sounds good. Thanks everyone.

 

[anon`]

^^^^^^Absolutely.

Ask him if he has a password for his network. If not anyone nearby can access his computer and yours. Its called Wireless Encription Protocol (WEP) in windows techie speak. Its not hard to do and he will thank you for it.

Once you set up WEP, the network will recognise your computer - you don't have to keep entering passwords all the time.

Noooooo!!! WEP was broken and insecure before the standard was even finalized. It's anything but secure now. Most APs support either WPA- or WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key), and this is what you should use. To the end user, it's basically like a second password, but it's a far more secure form of encryption that WEP ever was.

Also, in the interest of security, I recommend the following:
1) Change the SSID (network name) and channel
2) Disable AP broadcasting
3) Enable WPA/WPA2 (covered above)
4) Enable MAC address filtering on a whitelist basis (block every physical address except those explicitly added by the admin)

The above isn't perfect, but will keep you well-hidden from wardrivers and even most serious network hoppers.

(Also, if you need to get a wireless adapter for the project, make sure you find out what your neighbor is running--it will probably be 802.11g or 802.11n--and get an adapter compatible with that. If you use a slower standard, most APs will force everything down to that speed, and there is a huge difference between the revisions, especially b and g.)