bandwidth theft protection

[Zaknafein]

I have a high speed wireless connection, and for the past month or so, I have been noticing massive amounts of packet loss (warping) when I am playing online video games. Most of the time, it is alright, but sometimes, seeming for no reason at all, everything just goes crazy.
Before anyone suggests that wireless is bad for gaming, I would like to say that everything was decent until a short time ago, and thus couldn't be the method of connection to the internet.
Anyways, I suspect that this is happening because some foul individual (grr!!) has been stealing my bandwidth. So I am wondering how I would protect my connection from this person?
Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[jlanka]

first get on the AP/router and check what other MAC's are connected. That'll show you if someone else is on there at least

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[Zaknafein]

*stares* how do I do that, exactly? I am not as well versed on this kind of stuff as most people. Is there some way to do it using windos xp?

 

[jlanka]

usually there's a config utility thats either reachable directly from a browser (by typing in the IP address of the router) or is a seperate utility that installable from a CD that came with the router. I have a Linksys AP and it has a USB and an SNMP utiilty to get to it. But I imagine most combo routers/AP's have a web based config interface, which you may have already used to change some settings on it.

Usually just type the IP of the router on your browser address bar and that will get you in. There may be a password (found in the manual if you don't know it).

THen on one of the config pages it will show you what MAC's are attached, and maybe even a log of the ones that have attached in the last few days.


You can filter out unwanted MAC's by just allowing your own. THat SHOULD discourage the average neighbor from getting on. I say should because it CAN be gotten around by spoofing MAC's. But the average neighbor won't bother to get around that - too much trouble


THats all for now, see if you can find the stuff I was talkin about

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jlanka (. .)
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[Zaknafein]

I am not sure if I have got the correct router address..I went into control panel, then into network connections. Then I clicked on local area connection. In this window, it listed a number of addresses: IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. Are any of these my router address? They all failed to take me anywhere when I entered them into the browser address bar.

 

[jlanka]

most likely it's the default gateway. But you've gotta definitely read the manual on how to get into the config utility.

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[kwebb]

Your default gateway is your router's IP. It will almost certainly be accessible via a web browser. IE, Communicator, whatever browser you use. As mentioned, this will all be in your manual. You can also look at your manual for instructions on how to implement and configure WEP. This should be done. MAC filtering is fine and you should do that as well but you should definitely encrypt. Either with WEP or TKIP WPA if your router and card supports WPA. The manual should be your first action, then come back here for specific instruction if you run into trouble.

 

[umheint0]

WEP sucks balls. MAC filtering is the way to go. Sure, people can use packet sniffers, but they can use 'em to pull the WEP key too, so there's no difference. Plus the fact that Windows and WEP go together as well as Bush and Osama Bin Laden.

umheint0's phat setup --> <A HREF="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html" target="_new">http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html</A><--

 

[kwebb]

MAC filtering is barely a road bumpto someone who knows what he's doing. WEP on the other hand will take hours to break under the very best conditions, conditions that are virtually nonexistent in the vast majority of home WLAN's. You should use anything available to you so I'd not suggest not using MAC filtering but given the choice of the two, WEP is a MUCH stronger deterrent. WPA even better as long as you use a long passphrase. If you really think there's no difference in breaking WEP and MAC filtering you should probably do some reading. I've put WLAN's up for about 7 years. Never had substantial problems with WEP on any windows platform. Well I haven't done much with 95 so perhaps there are issues there.