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Grex > Agora56 > #63: the near future of networked homes? | |
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| 25 new of 290 responses total. |
keesan
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response 182 of 290:
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Mar 6 22:55 UTC 2006 |
We don't have DSL service, the neighbor does. We want to pick up his service
wirelessly and then wire our computers together with network cable. We have
a hub. We don't need 32 connections. Someone gave us a box with a wireless
router and a wireless PCMCIA ethernet card and we have a PCMCIA slot in one
desktop computer. Do we need the router or just the card? We can connect
our computers via nullmodem cable and share a phone connection that way
(telnet from one to the other, or use kermit to connect).
This is not important, we can just try to make DSL work on one computer in
the living room and listen to streaming audio with it. I am giving up on the
Detroit classical station, it has too many 30 sec noisy commercials and
traffic reports from 3:30 to 7:00 pm, which is when I would have listened to
it because the other stations stop playing music then.
We could run the sound from the sound card to the digital piano as Aux in,
but I think it is optimized to sound like a boomy grand piano.
First we need to get ndiswrapper working to use this wireless card in linux.
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nharmon
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response 183 of 290:
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Mar 7 01:13 UTC 2006 |
I would be very carefull about setting up a wireless network with a
neighbor in order to share broadband internet. Without said neighbor's
permission, this is clearly illegal. However the law concerning a
neighbor sharing such a connection is still a bit hazy and I wouldn't
want to be the first person to have to defend myself against a phone
company's lawyers.
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keesan
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response 184 of 290:
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Mar 7 02:19 UTC 2006 |
A different neighbor was going to let us use his but he moved. They were
thinking of Pringle antennas between houses a few houses away. Of course we
would have permission. How would it hurt the ISP? The neighbor might
experience a slightly slower connection if we listened to the radio at 32K/sec
on their 1.5MBit/sec connection. Jim points out that if people don't want
to share their connections they can set up a password to use them. We have
udhcpc, they would probably run some server for udhcp with password required.
How does this work with wireless connections at libraries?
We are still nowhere near having a usable wireless network card since the
stupid thing was designed to require Windows. SOmeone in our group tried to
compile ndiswrapper to let linux use the Windows driver for the card. There
may also be a linux module for a new kernel available.
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nharmon
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response 185 of 290:
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Mar 7 03:01 UTC 2006 |
> How would it hurt the ISP?
Lost revenue. The question is, whose service is your internet
connection? Is it the ISP's, or is it your's after you have bought it?
This is quite a grey area, but precedence is on the ISP's side, and
theft of service laws do have some teeth.
> Jim points out that if people don't want to share their connections
> they can set up a password to use them.
I think that is a dangerous attitude to have. You cannot trespass onto
someone's property because they left the gate unlocked, just as you
cannot trespass onto someone's computer network because they didn't know
to set a password. This is something I tell kids who think "war driving"
is cool: Do you really want to be at the mercy of some old guy who
doesn't know how his wifi works being told by the police that he needs
to press charges because that will prevent these things from happening
again? For them, its a good way to ruin their lives.
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marcvh
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response 186 of 290:
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Mar 7 03:40 UTC 2006 |
Actually, you can enter someone else's property if their gate is
unlocked. In order for there to be any reasonable chance of a
trespassing charge, the owner has to somehow ask you to leave. This can
be done in person, or can be done by posting signs, or any number of
other ways. Heck, if you leave your front door unlocked someone can
even enter your house and you can't charge him with breaking & entering
(since there was no breaking) or much of anything else unless you can
somehow show intent to do something illegal.
Unlike homes, however, ISPs do have terms of service, and they typically
permit sharing the service only within members of the same immediate
household living at the same address (that's what Comcast's says, for
exaxmple.) Tapping into your neighbor's ISP isn't any different from
tapping into your neighbor's cable signal because you don't want to pay
for HBO.
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slynne
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response 187 of 290:
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Mar 7 03:49 UTC 2006 |
I imagine there are ways to set up a shared network though. I know that
there was a woman who was going to buy the house next door and she had a
plan where she was going to get some super fast connection and then
share it with me and with the neighbor on the other side of her. I dont
know what kind of connection she was thinking of getting but she thought
it would cost $150/mo. I imagine that would have been a different
situation than DSL or Cable.
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tod
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response 188 of 290:
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Mar 7 04:24 UTC 2006 |
re #184
Yagi pringle antennas are neat if you can mount them well. Good luck with
that.
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jep
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response 189 of 290:
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Mar 7 13:42 UTC 2006 |
I got a wireless network router (Linksys) and some adapters, and have
networked a couple of Windows 98 computers in the kids' rooms. My
stepdaughter is getting a computer from the Rotary Club in a couple of
weeks. When she gets it we'll move the router to her room, a more
central location for our network, and then it should work a little
better for everyone.
I don't know anything about network security. The network is wide open
right now. How risky is this, and how should I deal with it?
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tod
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response 190 of 290:
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Mar 7 17:20 UTC 2006 |
re #189
Setup WEP on your router and the Wireless machines. You're basically
broadcasting everything you do on your computer and also opening yourself up
to who knows what.
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ball
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response 191 of 290:
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Mar 7 17:52 UTC 2006 |
Re #179: Generally you would leave your DSL modem and router
on all the time and power up computers as you use them. I
would guess about 20W max. continuous.
Re #190: WEP is trivial to crack, so offers no significant
protection.
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tod
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response 192 of 290:
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Mar 7 17:55 UTC 2006 |
re #191
Car door locks are also trivial but they deter most that may be tempted.
Defense in depth starts with simple security. Why would you not recommend
a simple configuration? Does jep live in Fort Knox or something?
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rcurl
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response 193 of 290:
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Mar 7 18:05 UTC 2006 |
Re #189: also choose a more cryptic SSID and create a closed network (so that
the SSID is not brodcast to any passing computer). I keep hearing different
opinions about the security of WEP - if the password is changed now and then
I thought it was pretty secure.
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tod
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response 194 of 290:
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Mar 7 18:15 UTC 2006 |
re #193
The neighbors were leeching bandwidth off my wireless router for several
months before I realized it. When I put the clamps down on the WEP setup then
there was a noticable difference in performance. Normally, I SSH for most
of my online transactions but for the layman I'd recommend securing your
entrypoint to the router.
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gull
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response 195 of 290:
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Mar 7 22:12 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:191: It's "trivial" in the sense that it's been automated, but
cracking WEP requires capturing a significant amount of traffic.
Unless jep has a lot of network traffic going on, someone's going to
have to capture data for several days before they'll stand a good
chance of cracking his key. (And of course they'll be foiled if he
changes his key during that time.)
WEP isn't secure in the sense computer professionals use the word
"secure," but it does act as a deterrent to casual leechers and
eavesdroppers.
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keesan
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response 196 of 290:
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Mar 7 22:48 UTC 2006 |
WEP - Windows Entertainment Pack?
We don't have a router or ADSL modem. How much power would a computer draw
with the monitor turned off and hard drive powered down?
There would be no loss of service to an ISP if someone who would not buy
broadband service borrowed a very small fraction of it. The phone company
used to consider it illegal to have your own phone instead of renting a phone
from them, or to have extension phones when it became legal to own your own
phone, not that it cost them anything. People would turn off the ringers on
the extension phones so the company would not know about them.
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marcvh
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response 197 of 290:
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Mar 7 23:40 UTC 2006 |
WTF? You said in #182 that you have a router, now you say you don't
have one?
Using someone else's broadband to check your email once a week would be
using a "very small fraction" of the service. Using it to stream music
for three and a half hours a day is not a "very small fraction."
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twenex
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response 198 of 290:
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Mar 8 00:25 UTC 2006 |
You need both a router and some sort of network card.
You don't usually get to pick and choose the number of connections your router
can support other than by selecting one model over another. Just because your
router supports 32/64/a gazillion connections doesn't mean you have to use
them all.
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keesan
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response 199 of 290:
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Mar 8 02:57 UTC 2006 |
We are not planning to use the router, just the wireless card, to learn how
to use a wireless card, and play 32K streaming audio, which is a very small
fraction of 1500K DSL line. Jim's 'ISP' connection is simply too
unpredictable to listen to music with - anywhere from 5K to 0K/sec downloads
and you get bumped off whenever they feel like it. 3/150 is about 2%.
We succeeded in getting the digital piano to play through headphones (phone
jack) and through the receiver (AUX out), and (badly) from the tape deck into
the piano (AUX in) and recorded my playing directly to the tape deck. The
AUX in has a great deal of static. Jim says we won't need radio now, we can
just record all the great piano music after getting free sheetmusic downloads.
He also plugged into the headphone jack a little gadget that broadcasts FM
to the nearest receiver, and it sounded awful but recognizable.
Does anyone know how to construct the cable that plugs into the round MIDI
jack at the back and then into the sound card MIDI (game port) port (or does
it plug into line out?)? I will look online for the wiring diagram. I want
to try playing piano midi music on the piano from the sound card.
Who needs broadband to check email when there is grex?
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ball
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response 200 of 290:
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Mar 8 07:25 UTC 2006 |
Re #192: I don't know jep's circumstances but I'm about to
deploy two wireless LANs, one of which will be at home. I
don't have anything top secret, but would still prefer to
keep my information private unless I explicitly publish it
for some reason. I have heard that WPA is less insecure
than WEP, but I'm thinking of going further by using
additional software to encrypt everything that gets sent
over the wireless LAN.
Re #195: My wireless LAN will see a significant amount of
traffic.
Re #196: I have a computer with a good power supply that
burns 27 Watts most of the time it's switched on. Other
machines may require more power.
Re #199: This is a guess, but it's
worth a try. Please let me know PC MIDI
if it works, so that I can add it ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~
to my notes. Use sheilded cable 4 GND ---- RX- 5
and connect the shield to pin 2 12 TXD ---> RX+ 4
on the MIDI connector. Leave the
shield unconnected at the PC end.
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nharmon
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response 201 of 290:
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Mar 8 13:41 UTC 2006 |
I do not rely on WEP or WPA for my wireless. Any encryption I need is
performed in different layers.
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keesan
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response 202 of 290:
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Mar 8 13:42 UTC 2006 |
Could you explain to me what RX means? Do we need only two wires connected?
The midi port looks like a keyboard plug.
Linksys (who made our wireless card) says they only support Windows. Realtek
(who made the chip on it) has a lot of broken links to Mac and Linux (source
code) drivers. Someone else posted an alpha version of a driver for this
chip, source code, which requires that I have kernel source code for 2.4 or
2.6, which I need to get and unpack into about 100MB on my computer in order
to be able to compile one little module (102K for Windows, by Realtek). Is
there some way to compile a module without the entire kernel source code?
Can I read the Makefile and just put in the parts it needs?
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nharmon
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response 203 of 290:
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Mar 8 13:47 UTC 2006 |
RX usually means 'receive'. TX is usually 'transmit'.
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nharmon
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response 204 of 290:
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Mar 8 13:48 UTC 2006 |
And here is a schematic of a midi cable:
http://www.cryogenius.com/hardware/sbmidi/
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fudge
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response 205 of 290:
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Mar 8 13:59 UTC 2006 |
re 202: most drivers can be built outside the kernel tree, but you might need
at least the kernel headers installed - depending on the disrto, you might
require the kernel-devel package or equivalent.
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keesan
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response 206 of 290:
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Mar 8 14:03 UTC 2006 |
Slackware. So I install just the kernel headers for 2.4.31 and then do a
'make'? I followed a link at the URL cited for cryogenics and found the
schematics for the SB $50 MIDI cable, which requires 1 diode, 2 resistors,
an OptoIsolator and an IC (with transistors in them) and a plug ends for
gameport, MIDI IN and MIDI OUT (5 pin) which we might have around but not the
IC and OptoIsolator. I wonder if this would let me also record MIDI files
to the computer (from MIDI out) with the right software.
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