Sharing a limited amount of bandwith while keeping the network secure.

August 17, 2004 12:20 AM

I want to share a limited amount of bandwith on my 802.11b to people at my bus stop, while keeping the network secure. (mi)

I got a belkin wireless B router at home with one machine accessing the wi-fi. My room mate is going to have her machine access the NAT (I think its NAT) from her work to home, and I want to give away dialup bandwith to anyone who wants it at the bus stop less than 50 feet away. We have open disks, Windows XP pro on all machines. How do I keep the network secure and still keep it real?

posted by Keyser Soze to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Note: SSI and encryption is off right now....
posted by Keyser Soze at 12:23 AM on August 17, 2004

I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

Seriously, your question is so full of self-contradiction that you need to go spend some serious time with google. Understand your terms, then understand the networking involved. Then address the security implications on such a network.

It may seem a little over your head at first, but look here for some good info.

Or maybe you were just posting drunk or high?
posted by Kwantsar at 1:16 AM on August 17, 2004

I think the question is perfectly valid (if I understood it correctly): can Keyser provide open Wifi internet access, on a bandwidth-limited basis, without having to compromise the other resources on his network? That's not inherently self-contradictory in my opinion, but I'm afraid I don't know the answer either. Just trying to help clarify.
posted by Songdog at 5:32 AM on August 17, 2004

Can't you just use a firewall on your machine and your roommate's machine? And then monitor the usage to see if there's anything weird or out of the ordinary?

Do people wait at that bus stop a long time? Are you going to mark it?
posted by amberglow at 5:48 AM on August 17, 2004

I don't know how sophisticated your wireless router is. It may be able to do it all itself. Probably not though, in which case you'll need a separate firewall/router.

All those ready-made commercial firewall boxes will do the basic setup. You plug the wireless router into what they call the "DMZ".

But you'll need one that can limit bandwidth. If you have a linux machine to use for this, Smoothwall will do it, though you need to either buy the commercial version or figure out linux traffic shaping.
posted by sfenders at 6:06 AM on August 17, 2004

If your wireless access point is also your router to you DSL / Cable modem line the only option is to limit bandwidth at the router. If you have a seperate acces point hanging of a pc you can do it with something like this.

I had a quick look at the Belkin page but the manual for Belkin does not mention anything so I think you are out of luck.
posted by sebas at 6:16 AM on August 17, 2004

You are going to want to look into bandwidth shaping on your wireless point. I know the linksys 802.11g points have some open source software out there that does this, not sure about the belkin.
posted by mathowie at 7:35 AM on August 17, 2004

How about making your IP static, defining the available addresses into a limited range, and then making the resources you want to keep secured available to your IP/Mac/Name only.
posted by tetsuo at 8:50 AM on August 17, 2004

Are you going to put a sign on the bus stop saying something like "Hey! You can use my Wi-Fi for free!..." ?

For some reason I really like the idea and want to do it myself now.
posted by ed\26h at 8:51 AM on August 17, 2004

You will need to buy or create a router with a DMZ. Essentially the DMZ is just like having two LANs. The DMZ is firewalled from your home LAN. If you have an old PC laying around there are many linux based distros that are soley routers. I believe Smoothwall can do this.

I dont think your dial-up bandwidth is enough, really. Splitting dial-up between two people is harsh, anything more than that tends to end up with lots of time-outs and errors.

or what sfenders said.
posted by skallas at 10:46 AM on August 17, 2004