Wireless router question.

[cohocarl]

A few years ago in my old house, I ran cat-5 network cable from my computer room to our living room and bought a router (this was before wireless networking came around) so we could have 2 computers networked and both be on-line at the same time.We recently moved, and I decided to go with a wireless router, and a wireless card in the wife's laptop. (this wireless stuff is cool!!!!)Question is: I always leave my cable modem powered up 24/7, and I've also been leaving my wireless router on also. If you have a wireless setup, do you leave your wireless router on 24/7, or do you power it down at night and at work, etc.? I'm not afraid of having the wireless signal "stolen" by someone near here because I live way up in the sticks, but was wondering if the wireless router should be shut down when I shut down the computer to save wear and tear on the transmitting innards of the router.Thanks,Carl

[millster]

No problems there. I wouldn't be too worried about the innards. I've not shut mine off since I bought it (well, that's not including the too numerous reboots). As for the theft of signal, if everything is properly secured, you'd be alright even if you didn't live out of the way... well, not that anything is completely safe but it's close.

[ragingfish]

Shouldn't be aproblem...Most people I know who do wireless just "set it and forget it," not to steal a line from an infomercial. They've been running trouble free.You should also be able to encrypt your signal so your signal can't be accessed by any machine other than those with the decryption key.

[ShotInTheDark]

my newtwork is done wireless ands I leave one computer running day and night proccessing SETI info. Never had a problem yet!

[rasermon]

I bought a Linksys Wireless-G (WRT54G) a couple months ago with no problems being close to the city. The Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router is really three devices in one box. First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect Wireless-G or Wireless-B devices to the network. There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices. Connect four PCs directly, or daisy-chain out to more hubs and switches to create as big a network as you need. Finally, the Router function ties it all together and lets your whole network share a high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection, files, and other resources such as printers and hard disk storage space. Cohocarl, if your in town anytime, stop in and check it out. Bring your laptop, I have a wirless USB adapter and you can try it out.

[cohocarl]

Quote, originally posted by rasermon »Cohocarl, if your in town anytime, stop in and check it out. Bring your laptop, I have a wirless USB adapter and you can try it out.Your router sounds like mine, but I bought just the 802.11b. I have my main computer connected to it with a cat-5 cable, and a wireless card in her laptop. I've read some stuff regarding "pringle can" antennas you can make to extend range if needed. Thanks for all the replies. I'll leave it on and not worry about it. I'd probably put more wear and tear on it turning it on and off all the time.

[rasermon]

Pic of my router.

Attached files

[Pablo1669]

We leave our wireless on 24/7, of course, we are using our computers till like 4 in the am some times since my room mate uses his for TV, and we're always downloading um... well you know what guys like to download. (RIAA sucks)Anyhow, we have our signal encrypted because we live in an apartment building. Shortly after getting ours set up, my room mate found out that we could have been mooching off of two (2) of our neighbors, not just one of them, but 2 of them. If only we knew this before we set ours up, we could split time between the neighbors for free. Damn.

[Sputnik]

Alright we were discussing encrypted routers at work and as far as I know mine is not (and I live in an apartment building!). Can someone tell me how I can do this? I did a google search but there's so much information out there - its hard to sift through it all.

[cohocarl]

The instructions that came with my router (D-link) had some info on securing the signal. I'm not too worried about it where I live, but if I had closer neighbors, I'd check into it.What brand/model do you have?Here's an example of how to set the encription on my D-link DI-514:http://support.dlink.com/faq/v..._revC

[Sputnik]

I have a Linksys - I don't recall reading anything about encryption and I'm not sure where the papers for it went. Maybe they have info on their website.

[joatmon]

look out, today I got a cable modem and wireless router hooked up and am now no longer crippled to pitiful substandard (even for dial up) connections. Big day for me woo hoo!Anyway, I got a netgear wireless router 802.11g and this wireless stuff is really slick.My router has a built in webserver to deal with the configuration, and I turned on encryption, just to do it, not because I'm worried about losing bandwidth or having neighbors snoop my LAN. Also run ZoneAlarm (free version) on all the PCs, and need ot look into the firewall /port blocking part of the router to see what it can do.

[Nick1556]

I use my wired router for my desktops. As for my laptop I have a wireless card in it. I don't use my internet for it, but rather, there are three people in my apartment building that have wireless networks so I just leech it off of them.

[rasermon]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »look out, today I got a cable modem and wireless router hooked up and am now no longer crippled to pitiful substandard (even for dial up) connections. Big day for me woo hoo!Anyway, I got a netgear wireless router 802.11g and this wireless stuff is really slick.Congrats and welcome to the broadband world.

[joatmon]

Thanks, it sure is nice. Haven't done any tests to see how far away the wireless will work, but it's pretty cool to turn the laptop on anywhere and be instantly on the net with good bandwidth. After years of having awful connectivity, I feel like the "kid in the candy shop"

[rasermon]

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »Also run ZoneAlarm (free version) on all the PCs, and need ot look into the firewall /port blocking part of the router to see what it can do.After installing my router, I found that it wasn't necessary for me to run ZoneAlarm. Here is a great site to check your internet security. https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

[joatmon]

two of us at home have laptops that connect up at home, work, on the road, so we'll keep it on there. One pc is stationary, but the kids use that one. To me the zonealarm, adaware, antivirus, all that stuff is like a virtual condom, the only time you don't need one is when you can be absolutely sure that where you're connecting is clean.

[stkos79]

most router setting can lock in onlycertain m.a.c serial numbersso set just the mac's you have and you should beoki got my new centrino and love the wireless future!!

[millster]

That's actually a dangerous misconception. A MAC address is easily cloned. Any semi-skilled hacker and even those with little skill can do it with little or no effort. Sadly with wireless, there is no truly secure method. WPA is an improvement of the sadly inadequate WEP encryption, but it's still not failsafe. My recommendation (and many others') is MAC filtering plus WPA (if your hardware supports it) or WEP. A truly motivated hacker will still get in if they want to but at least you've slowed them down. One other suggestion is to change the SSID from default and disable SSID broadcast.

[Sputnik]

I have the MAC filtering on, WEP, disabled SSID and changed the SSID from the default. Its amazing what you can learn online.

[wicked1981]

So is there a way to check to see if you are "sharing connections" with someone else? How do you stop it?

[futseal04]

You should be able to go on to your router status page and take a look. My netgear has an icon called "attached devices," where I can see who is on my network. There is also another icon that allows me to look at computers that are around.I just use MAC filtering. I know this isn't the safest way to go, but I think if someone wants in enough, they will get in.

[Kari]

Which one lets you look at computers that are close by, but not connected? That sounds pretty cool...

[futseal04]

The way i do it is to click on LAN IP setup, then under the address reservation box click on add (device). If a machine is picked up, it will be displayed there.

[Kari]

Pretty cool...I figured no one in this neighborhood was quite up with the times and I was right.

[AKLGT]

we have our house set up on a wireless router. my laptop is wireless and my dad's isn't. but he has it set on a firewall of some kind and won't allow anyone else unless he gives permission to use the connection. he's the computer geek, so i let him handle that stuff. LOL

[mrgoodrt]

Kari, Go to http://www.netstumbler.com. There is a free download there that will let you see what other access points are in range and whether or not they are encrypted.

[Sputnik]

So most times when my wireless network goes down I'm able to get it back up and running fairly quickly. However this time I'm stumped. The laptop is connected through the router - it says it is connected to my SSID and has good signal strength. But, I can't do any internetting or actually connect to anything. Anyone have any ideas why that is? Normally when my network goes down I can't use the internet on the desktop unless I take the router out of the equation. This time I'm going through the router on the desktop and getting the internet just fine... its just my laptop that can't seem to get anything. And since I usually do all my internetting on the laptop this is highly annoying.

[Sputnik]

yeah... I'll try it again though.

[Sputnik]

huh. I came over here to the laptop to release the IP and before I did, I started IE and guess what... it connected to the internet. It hasn't worked for 2 days and all of a sudden it does!? (removed)? Oh well.

[joatmon]

It just needed you to consult genvibe about the problem.Now post up a bunch from the laptop so it knows you learned your lesson

[Sputnik]

*hehe* My boyfriend has it right now. Its funny - he kept saying to me for the past two days "ask on genvibe!" And I didn't really want to because I seem to always be asking about my computer problems on here, then finally I got sick of not being able to figure out myself and came here. Shoulda done it sooner!

[zionzr2]

Quote, originally posted by Sputnik »I have the MAC filtering on, WEP, disabled SSID and changed the SSID from the default. Its amazing what you can learn online. all very good steps to keep yourself hacker resistant...unlike some routers i have found within range of my apartment....