FC9 NetworkManager & WPA

[Tim]

Tim:
>> Picture this scenario:  You plug in your new wireless router, it has no
>> security settings.  You configure it using the HTTP webserver, and
>> your passwords (any you set into it) are part of the HTML source
>> code, viewable by anyone else at the same time.  Your browser may
>> display them as ***** in the webform, but it's only the browser
>> display that's obscuring them.

(I forgot to mention the transmission of credentials in the clear, too.)

Leon Vergottini:
> I feel your pain there.  That is the only thing that I do not like
> about the router.  I have over come this problem by adding MAC address
> filtering under Advanced Tab.  With it on you cannot access the router
> at all unless your PC/laptop's MAC address appears in the 'allow
> list.'

I'll point out that's not really true.  Sure, almost nobody else could
accidentally connect, unless they co-incidentally had the same MAC
(there have been some duplicates).  But any hacker could deliberately
connect by deliberately setting their MAC as one of your own.

MAC filtering only stops other people *accidently* connecting and
hopeless hackers.

> If you are still having issues, then maybe you should try a firmware 
> update on the router, I haven't done it myself so I cannot say anything 
> about it.

I did update the firmware, in the hope that they'd improved things, but
the only update was for some rather peculiar network sharing feature
called tomizone.

The router came with a GPL notice, perhaps it's possible to replace the
firmware in this router, like can be done with others.  I haven't check
yet whether that's possible, and whether I'd want to.  Knowing my luck,
it's probably only part of its functionality that could be changed.  ;-)

> A TIP.  Please do not buy a D-Link ADSL router and try to get it talking 
> with the wireless router.  It is an absolute nightmare.  It took me a 
> whole day to get it going properly.
> The shocking thing is that according to the manual it is not possible.

How odd!  I had a bit of fun integrating it into my network, what I had
to do was moderately straight-forward, but how to make the router do it
was convoluted.  The interface is rather bad.

I'm not overly keen on the idea of wireless, but when I saw a router
going for about $60, I figured it was a cheap enough experiment.

By the way, it's much easier to follow messages on a list if replies are
actually "replies" (there's headers which associate related messages,
threading them together in the appropriate order), and if you identify
quoted material and who wrote it (as I've done).

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.25.14-108.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.