[rookie1010]

hello,

i was looking at the wireless security settings on my wifi router and was trying to figure out why why are there four keys in WEP,

i guess the passphrase is used to generate a key, who are the other three keys generated?

also how good is mac address filtering for the wifi router

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

They're called key indexes. Commonly, there are 4 key indexes. The point of having several key indexes is so that you can create multiple keys, all of which can be revoked at any time.

For example, I could have two different WEP keys set up on my wireless router at home. I could set all my home computers in the house to use key 1, while making my friends (who connect their laptops to my network) use key 2.

If I decide that I don't want my friends to be able to connect to my network anymore, I can then revoke / erase key 2. Since all my home computers use key 1, they will be unaffected.

If your router and network devices support, I strongly suggest you use WPA instead of WEP.

MAC address filtering is good because it explicitly states which network devices can connect to the router. All other MAC addresses not defined will be denied access. The downside to this is that each time you want to connect a computer to the router, you need to find the MAC address of the network device and manually type in the address into the router's approved MAC address list, which can be time consuming, and makes the process of connecting less seamless. Nonetheless, it provides an extra layer of security to your network, combined with an encryption method.

[rookie1010]

thanks for the reply,

makes sense now.
i am a noobie, and i am taking security one step at a time.

i guess there is no equest, response with mac filtering, it is just the routr which checks the new mac address against the database and lets it through, do devices whose mac address is not on the list get notified that you are not on the lists and hence are not authorised, or the person trying to connect never understands the reason why he could not connect?


i have two routers at home, and i am trying to connect to router #2, would it be possible for router 1 to submerge the signal of router 2, and hence all devices connect to router 1.

if i change the channel # of a router form 11 to say 1, do all the clients scan all the channels and hence i dont need recofnigure the clients?