I've just set up a home network. I've got my ultra-secure web machine as the master connection, and hanging off that I've got two laptops, one on ethernet, the other wireless.
What worries me is that these two laptops aren't very well protected in terms of up to date virus checkers etc.
But does that matter ? Is everything routed through the primary machine, or what ? And if I pick up something nasty while browsing on one machine, can it infect the network ?
hi
What worries me about your setup, is the wireless one. If I drive up in your neighbourhood, I could probably enter your "server" via that wireless connection.
There could be 2 ways to enter your server, the one you secured, and the wireless.
....and the weakest link...
A local Newspaper, tested this by driving around in a neighbourhood, they connected directly to 8 different wireless LANs, with no trouble.
So for wireless you need a proper setup,
i guess some TC/IP or MAC controll
Maybe a router!
I don't use wireless, so I am more or less guessing.
But wireless is a real nice solution if you can make it safe.....(I have a thick LAN-cable running....on my floor, for time beeing.
And ...
for file security (your own) LAN is great.
I always copy my files, so they appear on 2 PC's...
Don't think 2 will breakdown at the same time!
Thanks. I do have a router and am using 32-bit (wpa?) encryption on the 80211g wireless device.
Trouble is that it's win98. I've just spent half the night updating all its virus / spyware / trojan etc protection, plus windows updates...
But on a netork like this is it true that you're as vulnerable as your least well-protected machine, or does the "master" machine need to be the only one ?
If you connect multiple machines, a router is indispensable. It has the advantage over your current setup, that any computer can be shut down and the network connection stays available. Also, a router allows you to reserve certain ports for the local network, ie. ports 135-143 and 445, used for filesharing and remote desktop of Windows. Many worms used these ports to infiltrate machines. Block them from the WAN side, make them private, also when you don't use a router these should be reserved for the Local Area Network, see your firewall properties.
In my setup, the DAW is in connection with the laptop and they share drives, FxTeleport, VNC etc. I made sure these ports are only available to the LAN, not to the WAN side of the router. Also, I disabled access from/to the web for the DAW, which runs safely without anti-virus or firewall. The router can act as DHCP server (assigns IP adresses to clients), but I would limit that -for wireless ports, which I dont use for now- to as small as possible IP adress range. Or better, disable DHCP and set the IP's on your machines manually, so the router can't assign adresses to machines other than the ones on your network.
The most important thing I would advise is to at least make ports 135-143 and 445 private/local. And for convenience, get a router...
Thanks Atomic. I've got a dlink 624 wireless hub / router combo with 4 lan ports and 80211g wireless.
I've got everything working, but from your info it's obvious that there's a hell of a lot more for me to learn before everything's running properly.
I've got a NIC to install in my DAW as well, but I think I'll just wait until I know a bit more before I expose it to the wide world.
Trouble is these days there's so much challenge/response software that it's more and more difficult to have an offline DAW.
I also blame warez for a bit of this... I think to counter all the warez, developers are putting out more frequent updates so that real customers get value for money. But this just means more downloads.
