Advice wanted regarding setting up WiFi

Wed Mar 31 15:54:40 PST 2004

My brother-in-law who lives in Tokyo bought a new iBook and sent us
his old one, along with a WiFi base station.  My wife really wants me
to hook it up so she can be online in the bedroom, but I'm worried
about security.

Currently our network consists of 2 Linux and 1 Windoze machine, all
connected to a firewall/hub box I bought at Fry's, which in turn
connects to the cable modem.

The question is, what's the best way to hook up the base station?  I'm
nervous about plugging it into our existing hub (behind the firewall)
because then, anyone in the neighborhood with a WiFi-enabled computer
can get online through our connection.  That means they could use our
bandwidth, hack into our machines, or even send spam through our
network.  Not that I think that's likely, but I'm paranoid.

So I see two options:
 1) Add a new firewall box between the cable modem and the WiFi
station, and then our existing firewall between that and the wired
computers.
 2) Add a second ethernet port to our Linux server and connect the
WiFi to that, and use Linux's built-in firewall to control access.

Either way, I would also want to set up something to provide
authentication (NoCatAuth?) so only authorized users can use it.

I have very little spare time to mess with this, so I want something
that can be set up easily.  I also don't have the budget to be buying
a lot of hardware.

With these constraints in mind, what's the best solution?

--Bill.

-- 
William R Ward            bill at wards.net          http://www.wards.net/~bill/
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