Steve O wrote:
> The reason I ask is that my wireless system occasionally runs at a snail
> pace.
> This often happens at peak times, and sometimes not at all.
> I have checked my internet speeds when I have suspected that the neighbour
> is piggybacking and even though the broadband speed check shows full
> capacity, it is still running slow.
> Even my Google home page takes about a minute or so to load at these times.
> I'm running my home pc on a Belkin 54G wireless system.
> Data encryption is WEP and the password is still set at the default when I
> set it up with the manufacturer's helpline. (Do they always suggest
> 10,20,30,40,50?)
> So I was wondering if there was any way to detect piggybacking, preferably
> in the form of free software?

The Belkin 54G gives you a page which shows connected clients. But
also, the obvious things to do to PREVENT unauthorised access are:

1) Change the router's admin password IMMEDIATELY!
2) Change the encryption from the (easy to crack) WEP to the (harder
to crack) WPA and use a LONG random string as the encryption key. This
will make it harder for a dictionary cracking attempt to succeed.
3) Set up MAC address filtering
4) Stop your router from broadcasting its SSID

This should make any attempts to piggyback on to your connection very
much harder to achieve. Cracking WEP encryption is not difficult and
typically takes only minutes to do. WPA, with the provisio that you
use a LONG, RANDOM, string is much hardere to crack.

Regards,

Tim Kearsley