{"id":200,"date":"2005-12-16T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-16T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwilson.me.uk\/blog\/2005\/12\/upgrading-my-wireless-network.htm"},"modified":"2008-04-21T00:08:22","modified_gmt":"2008-04-21T00:08:22","slug":"upgrading-my-wireless-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2005\/12\/upgrading-my-wireless-network.htm","title":{"rendered":"Upgrading my wireless network"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I blogged previously, I experienced problems with my wireless network after I attempted to secure it<\/a> using wired equivalent privacy (WEP). My 802.11b access point didn’t support WiFi protected access (WPA), so I turned off all the security (except MAC address filtering), thinking that there’s nothing here worth stealing anyway (except my bandwidth, and I don’t mind if my neighbours share my connection from time to time). Then, last week I attended Steve Lamb’s presentation on Wireless security and remote access<\/a> and one point he made really worried me – what if someone was using my connection for something illegal? How could I prove that it wasn’t me (my ISP’s logs would show the IP address of my ADSL router and my account details)… unfortunately the answer is “with great difficulty”.<\/p>\n

Whilst I live on a pleasant housing estate on the edge of a rural market town and I like my neighbours, I don’t know what their Internet interests are, and I didn’t want to run that risk. That meant only one thing – the wireless security must come back on – and ideally using WPA or WPA2.<\/p>\n

Stage 1 was to buy a new access point (for not too much money). My budget of \u00c2\u00a340 (+VAT) meant that choices were somewhat limited. I had considered the Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GC until the friendly people at broadbandstuff<\/a> highlighted that these devices don’t include a modem – I hadn’t realised that there is a difference between a broadband router (which is for cable) and an ADSL wireless gateway (which includes an ADSL modem). After that, I considered the Linksys WAG54G and it’s replacement, the WAG354G, but both were slightly over my budget and some articles I read suggested that the firewall wouldn’t let me configure my own rules. Thinking about it, I realised that I don’t need a new router – my Solwise SAR 110 has been working well since I stealthed it<\/a> (I’ve since opened up a few ports and occasionally have to reboot, which I suspect is due to a denial of service attack, but thankfully not too often). After deciding that I only need an access point, I considered models from Linksys<\/a>, NetGear<\/a> and D-Link<\/a>. The Linksys WAP54G looked good, until I read an (admittedly quite old) Toms Networking review<\/a> that suggested it’s not too great on a mixed 802.11b and 802.11g network. I don’t like the styling on the consumer-focused NetGear equipment, but the business-focused WG102 looked good, had a great specification, but was too expensive for me this time around, so I decided to go for the D-Link DWL-2000AP+ instead, because:<\/p>\n