Beginnners wireless question....

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 11:21

Ive only really ever fiddled around with wireless systems but im doing one round my gf's house as its the only option.

Virgin media 2mb in to buffalo whr g54. ive got a couple of computers internally using 10/100 with shared drives. Now there are a couple of computers i want to link in wirelessly. Is mac filtering enough? As obviously i dont want people getting in to the shares on the other machines(hard wired)

The usb wireless dongles im using are the Us Robotics 5422 which offer different types of security but i havnt got a clue whether i need use them or not? as i would have thought that theoretically mac filtering was better

Cheers

tolien · 13 Jul 2007 at 11:24

No, MAC address filtering is a complete waste of time that causes more hassle than it solves.
You want to use encryption - in order of preference, WPA2/WPA/WEP. WEP's almost equally as useless as MAC address filtering, but it's (slightly) better than nothing.

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 12:05

thanks mate ill see if the us robotics thing does wpa2

TheVoice · 13 Jul 2007 at 12:20

There's a good WPA key generator here:
http://www.kurtm.net/wpa-pskgen/

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 12:38

hmm right ive installed the usb dongle and its connects ok but i cant get it to go on the internet, this is before ive done the encryption. I can how ever ping bbc.co.uk and other sites ok?

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 12:40

TheVoice said:
There's a good WPA key generator here:
http://www.kurtm.net/wpa-pskgen/

But i should use wpa 2 if it has it? wpa-psk or wep seems to be the only options i have on it

Snapshot · 13 Jul 2007 at 13:00

Any WPA is better than anything else.

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 13:19

any ideas on the no internet connectivity front?

Gavin · 13 Jul 2007 at 14:29

right its all encrypted but i cant for the life of me get any web sites up on it......yet i can ping them.

Any ideas anyone?