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AR15.COM
9/18/2006 11:18:20 AM EDT
Ok, I think someone is using my wifi network quite heavily. I moved into a new apartment complex and I am running into slow internet speeds and can only play my xbox live 30% of the time due to slow speeds.

Here are the specs:

Linksys WRT54GS
Xbox hard wired into router, port 1
Dell laptop using the wifi
Road Runner ISP

Security:

Network Mode - G only
Channel - 7 2.442 ghz
WEP 128bits 26hex


And that is all I know about wireless security

Can you recommend anything else to prevent people from using my network? Do you know of any easy sites that I can reference to set up the security? I am NOT very handy with setting up the security on this thing, it's pretty confusing to me.

Thanks
9/18/2006 11:24:47 AM EDT
[#1]
Turn on the MAC filter and enter the MAC addresses of all your wireless devices.
9/18/2006 11:26:12 AM EDT
[#2]

Quoted:
Turn on the MAC filter and enter the MAC addresses of all your wireless devices.


How do I find the MAC addresses on my laptop and xbox?
9/18/2006 11:34:15 AM EDT
[#3]
Looking at the product page from Linksys it appears that it supports WPA2.  Assuming your wifi card in the Dell can support that, you should switch from WEP to WPA2.

MAC address filtering as mentioned can also be helpful but is not hard to circumvent if the attacker is knowledgeable.

If you want to know if others have been connecting to it, there should be a page in there somewhere under the wireless config that give you a list of clients that have associated with the access point and their MAC addresses.  It could be that the problem has nothing to do with the router being used and something to do with your local Internet connection.


eta: MAC address can be found in Windows by doing 'ipconfig /all' in the command prompt.  The Xbox MAC address should be somewhere in the network configuration menu.
9/18/2006 11:36:21 AM EDT
[#4]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Turn on the MAC filter and enter the MAC addresses of all your wireless devices.


How do I find the MAC addresses on my laptop and xbox?


go to Start|Run type cmd in the box labled "open".

In the black box that appears type "ipconfig /all" (without the quotes)

The MAC address will be something like 00-08-02-D4-21-1B labled Physical Address.

Make sure you use the MAC addresss for the Wireless adapter.
9/18/2006 1:33:55 PM EDT
[#5]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Quoted:
Turn on the MAC filter and enter the MAC addresses of all your wireless devices.


How do I find the MAC addresses on my laptop and xbox?


go to Start|Run type cmd in the box labled "open".

In the black box that appears type "ipconfig /all" (without the quotes)

The MAC address will be something like 00-08-02-D4-21-1B labled Physical Address.

Make sure you use the MAC addresss for the Wireless adapter.


K, I will do that. Thanks guys.
9/18/2006 1:38:33 PM EDT
[#6]
login to your router >    click status   >  click local network > then click dhcp client table.   check the names, see if their are more names than you have computers.  


if your running xp with sp2   i would suggest going to wpa2 encryption if your network card supports it  


if you haven't already,  you might powering off  your cable modem for a about half an hour plug it back it and see if it runs any better.


if your speeds still aren't what they should.  call your isp and let them know  
9/18/2006 1:59:11 PM EDT
[#7]
While it certainly is possible, I would be surprised if someone had cracked your WEP key.  It's not hard to do, but I doubt anyone would take the time to actually do it.  Also, that person would have to consume a lot of bandwidth so it would get to the point that a device wired into the router would be running really slow.  My roommate and I play different online games at the same time (he usually plays Battlefield 2 and I play Day of Defeat) and our download and upload speeds are still pretty decent.  

While it won't hurt to swtich to WPA2, if I had to guess I would say it was an issue with your ISP or the router is dying.  
Restart the router, might want to reset to factory default settings to see if this has an effect.
9/18/2006 7:53:42 PM EDT
[#8]
its probably rr geting all crappy. next time it gets crappy run a ping test. ping 4.2.2.2 -t / you should see 20-30 ms responses.
also go to this ip. 192.168.100.1
look under signal the power level should be +5 -10 range
the upstream at the bottom should be somewhere between 27-55 hopfully its in the middle at 40.
did you end up in grandview?
9/18/2006 8:05:03 PM EDT
[#9]
try a different channel.

sure, there are 14 channels, but many of them overlap. Your best bet is to try several differnet channels, and see if one works better than the other. Also, you coudl run netstumbler and see what channels are being used.
9/18/2006 9:09:15 PM EDT
[#10]

Quoted:
try a different channel.

sure, there are 14 channels, but many of them overlap. Your best bet is to try several differnet channels, and see if one works better than the other. Also, you coudl run netstumbler and see what channels are being used.


Don't think it's a channel issue, his Xbox360 is running slow on the net, and it's wired into the router.
9/18/2006 9:14:12 PM EDT
[#11]

Quoted:
try a different channel.

sure, there are 14 channels, but many of them overlap. Your best bet is to try several differnet channels, and see if one works better than the other. Also, you coudl run netstumbler and see what channels are being used.


in 802.11b and I believe g as well there is a 5 channel overlap to maintain the full data rate.  For this reason channels 1, 6 and 11 are commonly used.

Channel 1 seems to be the closest and receives the most intereference from other things in the 2.4GHz band, such as cordless phones.