Network/Internet security Q?

Col_M

Col_M

Col_M

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2005
Posts
3,822
Location
London
Hi all, I'm moving to a new flat this week and for the internet connection there is just an Ethernet cable. The landlord says that the previous tennants just plugged it into their computer however there is also a router that can be used too.

My guess is that it's a connection run by someone in the building and simply has an Ethernet cable to each flat. Does that sound right?

Which makes me wonder about security, if it's someone in the building running this I'm not sure what security they have in place.

I currently have my main PC, a WHS, a PS3 and a HP Procurve switch. What would be the best way to create my own little secure network in my flat? A router/firewall?
 
Yes, get a wrt54g or something similar and run your own LAN in your flat, never heard of anything like that in a flat though, usually only get that in halls of residence @ uni.

Depending on their hardware though this could cause issues with double NAT'ing so personally I would get your own line in.
 
I'd try and find out a little more about it first.

I've had friends rent an apartment with a similar thing - it was all done properly and each apartment was VLAN'd so no interapartment traffic and each apartment had it's own public IP, so plugging in a router was needed for more than 1 host (they only had laptops so used a wireless router)
 
Thanks Sp00n, it seems to be pretty common over here, this will be the second place that I've been in where the internet has been provided over Ethernet. Well the last place where we had it was Ethernet over phone line (we didn't have a line with a telephone company so it was effectively dead) which was just connected to an Ethernet bridge not a modem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access#Wired_Ethernet

As there is a router there already and the landlord did say it was supplied by the guys who installed the internet I guess it must work and not cause problems with NAT. I'll probably just try it for now and see how it goes.

PistolPete, sensible suggestion :) Yeah, I was thinking that I don't really have much to go on right now so best to check it out and see what the score is.
 
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Just to update, I've been in the flat for almost a week now and everything is sorted.

My landlord called the ISP guy and he gave us the settings to use, IP, subset mask, default gateway and DNS. The guy on the other end of the phone apparently said to just copy and paste the settings onto everthing I want to connect to the internet, the stupid thing was they only gave me the one IP address and using others in the same range didn't work so I just put the settings into the WAN side of a router that was floating around the flat and plugged my switch into that. The router is basic but does the job fine although it sometimes craps out now and again, I think it gets too hot despite it being in a pretty cool place, I took it off the top of my switch and that helps but it hasn't completely removed the issue.

Also although my desktop, server and PS3 are cabled into the switch, wireless would be handy to have as my friend will probably bring her Wii around and it's nice to browse the web on my phone sometimes. The wrt54g is meant to be very good and all but are there any routers that have wireless N, gigabit LAN and will take custom firmware that are actually any good?
 
Tomato for the Asus RT-N16.

54GLs are recommended because there cheap but so well engineered. The only downside their cpu/ram is horribly limited now. For genereal use they tend to cap out just below a 30meg line, although single users have found them fine on virgins 50meg line but shove a lot of connections into one i.e. torrents and the cpu will be maxed out at roughly 16meg.

Buying new N16, cheap and reliable 54gl. Depends what you're doing/line is like.
 
Well I don't have a line as such just an Ethernet connection, in fact I don't even need a modem in the router (though it could be handy in the future).

My connection is only 3Mbps upstream and 0.5Mbps up at the moment but I'm going to speak to my landlord and see if he can get me on a faster plan.

The Asus looks pretty good actually and it's not too expensive :)
 
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