i am trying to setup our home wireless network a little bit more secure.
i'd like to make it a 128bit secured connection

here's our setup:
1 - SBC Generic DSL Router (not wireless)
1 - Belkin Wireless Antenna/Router (single ethernet port)
2 - wireless notebooks

so i have a question on our setup, well two questions really:

#1: need a guide for setting up our home wireless connection to be secure.
we live WAY out and only about three houses are really close enough to capture our signal, so i never really worried about someone tapping in, but about a month ago the neighbor had a bunch of people over and i walk into our bedroom where the router is and the "Activity" light is going haywire. so i assume someone found the WiFi signal and tapped in...i wasn't too worried (but i did reach over and switch off the router for the afternoon).

the problem is i'd like to make it secure since we do stuff like banking and whatnot online.

i tried setting up the Belkin wireless router using their "simple quickstart guide" but it's pretty worthless...it doesn't even show you how to password the network.

my wife's school had some guy come in and setup their wireless network (a 128bit encryption) at her school to where you can't even "see" the signal unless you know the correct password & # and i would like to make ours the same, but don't know how.

so i need a step by step guide on how to set one up.

#2: Need to "clone IP" so multi users can use one router/hub.
my wife and I both have wireless notebooks and right now the way the default setup is, if i turn my notebook on (even if i just power it up and the WiFi antenna is on) it boots her off and we get an "IP Conflict Error".
my buddy told me i needed to "clone" the IP to make the router "think" there is only one device using the signal.
i need it possible for BOTH of us to be online at the same time without kicking each other off. anyone know how to set that up as well?

if someone could direct me to either, that would be great!

i don't know enough about wireless networks to make this work, so any help is appreciated!
i know there is enough network/IT geeks here to more than likely get my answer!

 

check out a linksys WRT54G router. it has 4 ethernet ports and won't give you any "IP Conflict" errors. the 128 bit encryption is super easy to set up too.

 

isn't there a way i can make it work with my setup now?
i don't need anymore hardline ethernet ports cus everything is wireless.
the Belkin i think is just a relay really cus it just has one ethernet "IN" port on the back and a power supply no "OUT" ports or anything like that.

and do you know and sites i could look to get the 128bit encription up and running?
i know the Belkin supports it, the guide just neglects to tell you HOW.

 

You might have to check your IP settings (on the laptops) to see if you have static IP's set up or if they are automatic.

The router that I had set up for wireless was set up so if you put it's IP in Internet explorer you could change all the settings including the encryption. Then you would select 128 bit and then you can choose a key and then put that key in your laptops for the wireless connection.

I know this is probably very general information that our resident IT guys can expand on.

 

i will look, i think it did in fact have a generic default IP that i could try to gain access to the control panel.
i have to find the instruction book from the router as well, i originally found it useless and filed it with the "IWILLNEVERUSETHISCRAP" material.

 

If you can get online to the company website they might have the instruction manuals in pdf format.

Hopefully that is.

 

i'll be off tomorrow so i think i will goof with it then.

thanks for the tips...
keep them coming!

 

http://setup.belkin.com/guide.html

That might help

www.belkin.com

 

Honestly, dude, if your router is that old as to have only one port, it may not even support 128 encryption anyway.

Simple answers to your queries..

1. WEP encryption at 128 will be sufficient. To make it so that the connection doesn't even show up, you'll want to 'disable SSID broadcasting' within your router (provided it supports it).

2. A 4 port router also functions like a switch and will "clone" the IP like you're trying to do. It would actually be doing what's called NAT to allow you to have more than one node on the private side of the router (your laptops) and have both connect to the intarweb. NAT = Network Address Translation

If you want, I have to go to Frys sometime this weekend (I'm thinking Sunday maybe) to pick up a wireless networking solution for my dad for Christmas. If you wanted to pick up a new router, they're like $30-$40 so it's not too expensive to get you up and running with current hardware that will do everything you want it to. And if you get a new router, the manuals are pretty complete as to how to secure it as you are asking. Let me know

 

And sonicsuby comes through wit dem details that I didn't have.

 

right on bro!

i will check out what i have going in more depth than just, "hey there's the box w/ the antenna thingie and it's blinking...neat."

its a new wireless unit, but it was open (read: no) box at office max for $5 so i don't think i got all the materials it was supposed to come with originally.
i think it is designed to be a wireless signal extender/booster rather than the singal source of the wireless signal.
it works just fine for what we've needed it to, but i just never took the time to really connect it the way it is supposed to be so i think that may be the cause of a lot of the connection issues my wife has (which in turn make her want to throw stuff in my general direction when she's online and it just drops her connection).

all this stuff is good stuff!
i'll try to make use of it tonight or tomorrow and see if it is something i can work with or if i will need to purchase more equipment for the solution.

 

also, does anyone know what the heck the "Network Bridge" on XP is supposed to do?

my wife's HP Pavillion Lappy had every connection in the bridge and it gave me more trouble than ever until i removed her wireless connection from the bridge.
then her connection worked fine, but i wanted to see if there was any benifit to using the bridge vs. not.

my lappy has it too, but it came from Dell w/o the wireless connection in the bridge as a default so i'm at a loss at what it's supposed to actually "do."

 

Here's a Microsoft doc Clicky

As I understand it, it's a method of connecting two network segments. For example, if you had 3 devices and two cables, you have devices a, b and c.

a -> b = one segment
a -> c = one segment

But 'b' can't play with 'c'. So you set up the bridge on your laptop. I think the way you do it is if your laptop were 'b' and it had two NICs, you would go:

a -> b
b -> c

And the "network bridge" would accomplish the necessary routing between the devices. Without the bridge, if you just plugged the cables in trying to get them all to work like that, it wouldn't. You'd either need a switch/router or the bridge.

 

right on.

good to know.

 

That sounds about right. In your setup I don't think you want to use the bridging at all.
An example of when you might want to is if you want to use a laptop with both a wired and wireless connection to share the wired network connection with other wireless devices.

On your laptop problems, are they configured to 'get IP address automatically' (DHCP), or
a fixed static configuration? If you are having IP address conflicts you likely have one or more computers configured with fixed IP addressing. Your DSL router probably has a DHCP server running on it, so DHCP should work for you, and will automatically avoid the IP conflicts.

Roy