[pchelpers] Re: wireless router, suggestions please
- From: Scott McNay <Wizard@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Louis M Hall <pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 23:14:34 -0500
Hi Louis,
Wednesday, July 16, 2003, 8:17:57 PM, you wrote:
LMH> I am curious about this portion of your comment regarding home
LMH> networking. What does "---and use *YOUR*IP address to do
LMH> stuff--"? I'm on cable and neighbors are on the same cable
LMH> service. Can they tap in? I'm using a non wireless linksys.
Without security, anyone can tap into a wireless router. In most
cases, you're sharing a single external IP address among the different
computers that are attached to the router. The external IP is
assigned by the cable company. Each computer gets a local IP address,
which is assigned by the router, and is not visible from outside.
Anytime you send a request for, for example, a web page, the router
translates the local IP address of your computer to the external IP
address assigned by the cable company. Thus, no matter which computer
in your network is making the request, the web server sees only your
external IP address that was assigned by the cable company.
As for the router itself, if it's not a wireless, then you must have a
physical connection. I'm sure it's possible for someone who's on the
same cable segment to pretend to be you, but it'd require special
software, at the least, and the way that the cable company implements
things may preclude that also.
For people with a wireless router, having someone sneak in can also
result in reduced throughput for you, since you'd be sharing the
connection with someone else. This would likely be most noticeable if
you're sharing a dial-up or ISDN connection, which are slow enough
already.
--Scott.
Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig>
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