Wireless router are by default are completely insecure. The default settings of brand new router were purposely set to be insecure to facilitate the easiest possible installation. If you leave these settings at default, it’s essentially similiar to putting up a big sign in front of your house, saying “Please come in and rob me.”

Here are basic 6 simple steps to secure your wireless router.
Read more »

Wireless routers are easy to setup, just turn on and plugging them in, but are extremely insecure and vulnerable by default. In this article, I will focus on optimizing a standard 802.11g wireless router in two areas :- speed and security. I will be using NetGear WGR614 for working example.

Equipment Selection

Even before you go out and buy a wireless router, you should plan ahead in advance which brand and model of router you desired. The ideal situation would be get a wireless router and required client adapters from same brand, especially if you’re buying 802.11g enchanced router, like the Netgear WGT624 108Mbps router and the WG511T PCMCIA card, or the WG111T USB adapter.

This is because the proprietary enchancements will only work with their own family within the same brand. You can still connect standard 802.11g/b devices to it, but would’t be able to fully utilize the potential high throughput speeds these technologies have to offer.
Read more »

If you just want to be able to wirelessly stream music from your PC to your powerful boom box in another room, the NETGEAR Wireless Digital Music Player will be able to sing to your tune in wireless 802.11b/g style. It can even make your stereo system churn out tunes from Internet radio stations worldwide.
Read more »

I received email from Johns on setting up wireless home network.

I currently use Alcatel modem (Speed Touch 330) given to me from ISP and I simply can’t get to work with Gentoo Linux (2.6.9 Kernel). I decided to build a wireless home network, so I’m planning to buy a D-Link DSL-G604T wireless ADSL router.
My first question is: Is this hardware fully compatible with Linux or do I need to install any drivers as with the Alcatel modem?
I have notebook and wanted to connect it to the network through a wireless cardbus adapter. I want a card supported natively by a kernel modulem, something that could work straight out of the box. After some reading, I found that it should be a card with Prism 2/2.5/3 chipset, but I’m confused and don’t know how to find a manufacturer or vendor of a popular cheap card with that chipset. So my second is, can you suggest a good adaptor using Prism chipset?

The wireless router from D-Link will make the connection to your ISP over DSL circuit, so you will not need any PPPoE or PPPoA support on the Linux system.

You can connect straight into the router using Ethernet and DHCP against the router for an internal IP address. Essentially, everything will be offloaded on to the router, making you Linux system a plain old workstation, rather than a router.

As far as PCMCIA wireless adaptors are concerned, you can check out www.linux-wlan.org or www.prism54.org

You’ll find that Prism54 identifies devices supporting the 802.22g standard as well as 802.22b for faster connectivity. Prism2 and Prism54 cards are identified by Knoppix at boot time, and will enable you to access the internet easily without having to install a large number of supporting packages.

You would be pretty surprised to know how many people set up a broadband connection, get a nice wireless router for it and then proceed to broadcast their connection for all within range to see and indeed use. All the more worrying is that if you use it as a network hub, then you can give people access to shared folders on your PC. So many people do this in fact that there is a hobby grown up around it called wardriving, where techies drive around with a wireless enabled laptop and use a piece of software, often NetStumbler, to see how many insecure wireless networks they can find.

Read more »

Need to monitor your employees’ web surfing use or your kids’ online interaction? If so, Prismiq’s Commander Wireless Router with Internet Warning and Control Software (IWACS) Technology is for you. Not only does it offer a sneak peek at what users are doing and where they’re surfing, but it also provides transcripts of instant message. The trade-off, however, is that the 802.22b/g router lags on performance.
Read more »

Broadcom has introduced a $39 chipset that could enable cell phones that can play video, make VoIP calls, and connect to the Internet at high speeds via Wi-Fi wireless networking connections. The company says that such phones will enable business travelers to say good night to their children face-to-face. The chipset includes the BCM1161 mobile VoIP processor, the BCM4318E AirForce One single-chip 802.11b/g Wi-Fi solution, and the BCM2702 VideoCore multimedia processor. The chips support H.264 and H.263 video communication standards at rates of up to 30fps, meaning that the video won’t be as jerky as previous cell phone videos and will be more akin to TV-quality video. The chipset is in production and was on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past January.