Re: [tlug] Linux Wireless Networking

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

On Sat, May 03, 2003 at 12:02:15AM +0900, Charles Muller wrote:

>wonder if there are any sticking points I should keep in mind regarding doing
>this on Linux (RH 8 & 9)?

Wireless networking (talking 802.11b) here has a few sticking
points of its own:

1) Speed.  11 mbps is not terribly fast.  Connecting your
laptop and desktop together with a crossover cable and
a couple of cheap 10/100 NICs will get you 100 mbps 
(or use a cheap 10/100 switch and two straight cables instead,
but a rollover is cheaper if you have only two machines) at
a far lower cost;

2) Security.  The joke about WEP is that it really stands for
"Wiretap Equivalence Please" since it was never terribly
secure anyway, and was completely broken about
two years ago.  If a cracker is sniffing your WEP packets, your
network will be cracked.  How long it takes is a matter of how
busy your network is, but it will be cracked.  If you want the
things you send over your wireless network to be secure, 
run it all over an SSH tunnel or IPSEC tunnel.  That still
doesn't mean your WEP keys can't be cracked, but it means that
if they are, your data is still worthless to the cracker b/c
it's all using strong crypto.

Don't know offhand if any wireless access points support
MAC address controls or not, but if they do, I strongly
implement buying one that does, as an additional means of
keeping strangers off your network.

Jonathan