Public Wireless Question

[smackedass]

Hello,

I am looking for suggestions from anyone willing to share their experience
of setting up a secure public wireless scenario; i.e., a library or coffee
shop or a similar type location, where no user authentication is required to
get to the Internet, but where the computer that is hard-connected to the
wireless router is totally secure from the wireless users.

I'm told by the folks at Linksys that the WRV200 supports VLAN, and that
VLAN ought to accomodate this arrangement. But is this enough? Sure, I'll
go out and buy the thing to check it out hands-on, but I'm also interested
in hearing any of your stories.

Thanks, again,

smackedass

 

[Mike Walsh]

VLAN is not applicable to your configuration. The simplest way to secure the wired PC is to use a good firewall e.g. ZoneAlarm and turn off file sharing. The guest account should be turned off, which I think it is by default.

 

[Pat H1]

This may be a little outside of what your looking for but...
check out the offerings from coova.org. It's an open source "Hotspot"
manager that includes some interesting features.

We have recently begun testing this product for some of our wireless needs
and are impressed with the ease of setup...pretty cool what you can do to a
Linsys router!, and the functionality of the product. Our test is currently
limited to just a couple of machines with Administrator access so I do not
have much "real world" time with the product.

-P