From: "Ben Norcutt" ben@plextech.co.uk To: "alug" main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [Alug] Wireless WANS (i.e. Norfolk) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:22:48 -0000

I have just started playing with wireless stuff at work and it's great to be able to wander around with a laptop my boss loves it. I work at Framingham Earl High School As the Network Mangler and would love to help out if I can. We have a 2mbit DSL connection going unused during the evening. This would be fine for general web surfing but there are a number of restrictions that you need to be made aware of.

If anyone wants to experiment let me know. Maybe we should have a wireless antennae building session etc... I have a couple of waps and pcmcia cards at work.

Errrrrmmmm ... I hate to be picky, but wouldn't the education authority or whoever is paying for all this stuff have some kind of problem with you inviting all and sundry to use their network (which presumably contains sensitive information)? If I was the headmaster, the "number of restrictions you need to be made aware of" would include "Connect anyone to this thing without my express permission and you're fired".

In last year's UK Networking Industry Awards, of which I'm one of the judges, one of the entries was an educational establishment that was very proud of its new wireless LAN installation. Sadly, at no point did the entry blurb (which was many pages long) include terms like "security" or "encryption" - in fact the implementors were proud that you could surf outside the school buildings on your laptop.

They didn't win.

By way of a footnote, it's interesting to see how many companies don't turn on security by default. At the Networks Telecom Show at the NEC last June, a friend of mine who runs a super little security product dealership/consultancy was showing me his new toy - a wireless LAN analyser from Vernier Networks. We stood in the middle of the NEC identifying literally dozens of insecure servers on this thing, because the vast majority of exhibitors didn't have security turned on in their wireless installations. Not a problem at a trade show, you'd think, but you must remember that many stands have phone/ISDN links back to the main office, thus giving any old muppet with (in our case) an iPaq and a few hundred quid's worth of software a really nice route into their corporate networks.

D.