but those were useful features!

[cellio]

A very helpful (yes, really!) technician at Verizon diagnosed our network problems as a flaky router, so he sent us a new one and we swapped it in today. The old router had two features that I found useful: I could name devices on the network, and the "my network" list showed me everything that had connected since the last router restart, not just

Comments

[miz_hatbox]

Passwords and not sharing our network connectivity with people we don't know super-well.

[cellio]

Do you do any monitoring? If your password were to be compromised, would you know?

[miz_hatbox]

Oh, we just check the logs. That's about it.

[cellio]

Thanks!

[merle_]

This. Although whenever my Roku decides it can't see the network I have to re-enter a ridiculously long password using a UI designed in 1950.

I also don't use DHCP and bind my router to the MAC addresses, then the devices to particular internal IP addresses. On a subnet that is not a standard one. Really, when (example IP range) are you going to go to 1.1.1.[17-32]?

Roku

[cellio]

Yeah, whoever thought to lay their "keyboard" out alphabetically should be sent back to HCI 101.

I've tried restricting by MAC address in the past and it was a big pain -- aided, I'm sure, by my difficulty in reading the things on some devices. But that might be worth looking at again; we don't get guests who need our wireless that often. (These days most people carry internet access in their pockets, after all.)

[merle_]

The MAC filtering is an enormous pain. But with the rate of new devices being under two per year (for me) it is bearable (especially now that many things have a label with the MAC). Not that it is perfect, as someone with the right hardware can spoof their MAC and if they catch you during an outage get onto your network, but whether this is a problem greater than a mere loss of bandwidth depends on other measures, like not sharing drives without an additional password layer.

[cellio]

Oh good point; I thought I was stuck because I need their modem, but there's no reason I can't separate the functions again. Thanks!

[cellio]

Huh, interesting. You're not worried about somebody using your service to, say, surf child porn?

(I'm not worried about the machines on my network; those are reasonably hardened. It's the wireless itself -- or, more specifically, the data trail that could be subpoenaed from my ISP -- that I worry about.)

[goljerp]

Does anyone know if the "my wireless is wide open, it wasn't me doing ZZZZ on my IP address" defense has been used successfully?

(I know, I could probably just search Slashdot's archives... but my wireless does have a password.)