[NTLUG:Discuss] Wireless Home Network

[Lance Simmons]

* Randall Gibson <wabbit at tvec.net> [040626 10:24]:
>
> You may think that your safe since you cannot get a good signal
> throughout your house, but anyone that was looking to connect to
> random wireless networks is probably a little better equipped.

I wasn't saying I was safe, I was trying to assess the relative weight
of two different threats: threats from people wanting to connect
wirelessly to me, and threats from people wanting to connect to me from
the Internet.  What I was getting at wasn't that the wireless attacker
has to be standing just outside my house, but rather that he has to be
relatively near it.  However far a wireless attacker's antenna reaches,
he'll have to be pretty close to the house (probably in the same
neighborhood, for example).  An attacker from the Internet can be
anywhere the Internet is.  And that's almost everywhere.  That's the
point I was getting at.

If I attach my wireless router directly to the Internet, I'm counting on
D-Link having a safe firewall, because now anyone on the Internet can
attack my wireless router.  If I put the router behind my own firewall,
then an attacker _from the Internet_ would have to go through my
firewall and then through the router's firewall to get to my wireless
network.  Since I think there are orders of magnitude more potential
attackers coming from the Internet, I'd rather not expose my wireless
router to the Internet.

Again, I'm new at all this, so I'd like to learn what other people have
done or think about this topic.

-- 
Lance Simmons