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Re: [OM] A wireless router data point

Subject: Re: [OM] A wireless router data point
From: "Jeff Keller" <om-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:37:06 -0700
A handy utility is inSSIDer, which will display the relative strength and
channel of all of the wireless networks you receive.
<http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/>

My own experience is that if I pick a channel which partially overlaps each
of two other broadcasts but is completely overlapped by the combination of
those two, my wireless will work better than if it overlaps a single
broadcast.

If you leave a wireless router at its default settings your neighbor could
change them for you or if you have a network printer, use up all of your
printer paper.

I've been changing the subnet IP address ever since I saw how easy it was to
get into my neighbors out of the box wireless network and imagined how much
"entertainment" a miscreant could have. Forcing the miscreant to sleuth out
one more detail is worth the sixty seconds it takes to change it.

I also found that if I set up a wireless router at each end of the house on
different channels but almost everything else set the same, I can walk from
one to the other without connectivity problems.

Jeff Keller

-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Norton [mailto:ken@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Subject: Re: [OM] A wireless router data point

I recently found an interesting problem that could only be diagnosed
with WireShark.

Living in a condo, there is too much channel contention and if I get a
room away from the WiFi router, I'm losing connection speed because of
the overlap with the neighbors. Well, that's usually not too much of
an issue, but here is where things got fuzzy.

Let me set the stage here and kinda go generic so you can tell if you
have a similar issue:

1. My WiFi AP was set on Channel 6. Neighbor units an 1, 6 and 11. All
APs running security.

2. Everything is going fine, but I notice a lot of traffic on the AP
that isn't me. The activity lights are going berzerk.

3. Firing up WireShark, I see my packets and the other packets from
the household. But I'm also seeing packets from somebody else!!!  But
looking at the access table in the AP, there is nobody else on. But
the IP addresses are in the same LAN space!

4. My LAN was 192.168.0.1. So was my neighbor's LAN. By having the
same LAN running on two APs on two networks adjacent to each other,
100% of my packets were being relayed on not only my AP but their AP
and vise-versa.

5. I changed my LAN to another subnet, (ie, 192.168.10.1) and that
immediately addressed that. The activity lights quieted immediately
AND the throughput increased back to normal levels.

So, this does bring up an observation. Even though BOTH WiFi systems
were running WPA, using WireShark, which is a packet-sniffer, I was
able to see the packets from their network. I couldn't access the
Internet through their network, but I could see every website and
packet that flowed to/from their computers from their WiFi AP. In
essence, by not only being on the same channel, but being in the same
IP addresses, I was able to spoof their AP and see their information.
Of course, this went both ways!

Therefore, what I recommend is not only changing the standard settings
of the WiFi AP from "LinkSys" or whatever it defaults to from the
factory, but also changing the LAN from the default to some
neighboring range.

AG
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