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Airport Extreme Security?

A

AdmittedPCuser

macrumors member
Original poster
Planning on buying my first Mac soon and I just realized, with all the research I've done, I don't know what kind of security Airport Extreme uses? Does anybody know if it's standard 128-bit WEP or can it use WPA?

Thanks,

PS. Anyone have any good rumours about new PowerBooks... I'm kidding... sorry, I couldn't resist... 🙂
 
AdmittedPCuser said:
Planning on buying my first Mac soon and I just realized, with all the research I've done, I don't know what kind of security Airport Extreme uses? Does anybody know if it's standard 128-bit WEP or can it use WPA?
Click to expand...

The Extreme and Express handle WPA just fine (I have both, and am using WPA on our home network). Originally you couldn't use the Express to extend an Extreme network unless you switched to WEP; but the most recent update resolved that issue.
 
Westside guy said:
The Extreme and Express handle WPA just fine (I have both, and am using WPA on our home network). Originally you couldn't use the Express to extend an Extreme network unless you switched to WEP; but the most recent update resolved that issue.
Click to expand...

That's great news. Thanks for reply.
 
I have an Airport Extreme. If I were you I'd spend $50 on a Linksys WRT54G. It has much better range than the Extreme and it's much cheaper.

Let me know if you want to buy my Airport Extreme. 🙂
 
nels0360 said:
I have an Airport Extreme. If I were you I'd spend $50 on a Linksys WRT54G. It has much better range than the Extreme and it's much cheaper.

Let me know if you want to buy my Airport Extreme. 🙂
Click to expand...

I haven't used the AirPort Extreme base station, but I've heard that from a number of people. It just looks so cool... like every thing else Apple touches.

I was actually referring to the AirPort Extreme that comes built-in with the PowerBooks. I know Linksys dominates the market for home-based wireless networks, but I've been using this 3Com Wireless Router at home for a while now and it's been awesome. Not a bad price point for a 3Com product either... with WPA security. I think I paid around $120 CDN. The Linksys was about $100 CDN at the time.

The only reason I asked about WPA is because a neighbour down the street actually had his network hacked while he was on 64-bit WEP. I did some research on-line and was blown away with the amount of information out there on how to hack WEP encryption... although I still think it's rare for most residential based applications.
 
AdmittedPCuser said:
...

The only reason I asked about WPA is because a neighbour down the street actually had his network hacked while he was on 64-bit WEP. I did some research on-line and was blown away with the amount of information out there on how to hack WEP encryption... although I still think it's rare for most residential based applications.
Click to expand...
For more detail on people hacking into wireless bases, search the web using the term "wardriving".

WPA is the only way to go for encryption. I would also probably restrict access to know MAC addresses as well as making it a closed network.
 
Bear said:
For more detail on people hacking into wireless bases, search the web using the term "wardriving".

WPA is the only way to go for encryption. I would also probably restrict access to know MAC addresses as well as making it a closed network.
Click to expand...

is there an easy way to find out if someone is using your airport extreme to access the internet? the airport log isn't quite helpful there. i'd like to see if someone tried to log on, if someone did and what IP adress he got.

andi
 
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