Residence Hall Wireless Information

When installing a wireless access point in your residence there are several security measures that should be considered to prevent unauthorized access to your network and data. Without taking these measures the risk of someone accessing the Internet through your wireless access point or eavesdropping on your data is very high. Any bandwidth abuse issue or security violation will identify your IP address as the offender and you will be responsible for the consequences which may include, but are not limited to disconnection from the RUNet.

Even when multiple laptops that you expect to be accessing the network are connecting through your wireless access point you will be restricted by our normal bandwidth policies. The sum of all of the traffic from each laptop will be counted against your limit. Likewise, any other abuse issues created by your guests will be your responsibility.

The following settings are common to most wireless access points, however they will be located in different sections of the configuration tool:

SSID - This is the name of your wireless network. First, enable the wireless card on your laptop and note the names of any other wireless networks in the vicinity. Do not use the same SSID as any other available network, such as OIT-Camden.

There will also be an option to broadcast the SSID. This should be disabled. Once disabled you may need to manually enter the SSID into your laptop for its wireless network interface to be able to see your wireless access point. This will prevent other computers from noticing your network.

Encryption - Encryption will make it difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on the data being transferred between your laptop and the wireless access point. It is recommended to ue a strong level of encryption such as WPA2. You will need to set your laptop's wireless network interface to use the same type of encryption. The key or passphrase should be set the same on both the wireless access point and the laptop. It is also a good practice to periodically change the key to prevent malicious users from determining it.

DHCP and MAC Address Filtering - Your wireless access point may run a DHCP service. This is a service that provides unique IP addresses to the computers that connect to it. You should only provide a range of IPs large enough to accomodate the number of hosts that you expect to be connecting to your wireless access point. Some DHCP servers also let you specify who gets each individual IP. You can use that to limit the IPs given out to the specific hosts that you expect to be connecting by assigning the IPs to the individual MAC addresses of the laptops.

Some access points also allow MAC address filtering. Similar to limiting the IPs given out by the DHCP server to MAC addresses, MAC address filtering prevents anyone from associating with the wireless access point unless they are in the list of allowed MAC addresses. Create this list with the MAC addresses of the laptops that you expect to be on your network.

Password - Your wireless access point will have a password that protects its configuration screen. This should be changed from the default and should not be shared with anyone.

For more information on RUWireless please visit: http://ruwireless.camden.rutgers.edu

Questions/comments regarding Camden Computing Services or this web site
can be directed to: help@camden.rutgers.edu.
Last updated: September 25, 2006, 12:33 EDT.
© 2005-2007 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.