Heehee…we had a bit of fun a while back using a combination of upsidedownternet and an SSID like that, actually (I think it was “DON’T USE THIS WIRELESS” or something). We used ‘ternet to put a banner at the top of every page saying “Seriously, don’t.”

I’ve just finished doing a similar thing to what thither + upsidedownternet suggested: Only a few MAC addresses can access my internet/network, the rest are dumped onto a second subnet with a captive portal-style gateway.

It worked quite well up until I added a “drop all packets that aren’t on port 80” rule on my server and forgot to only tell it to do this on the new subnet :mrgreen:

Luckily I have keyboard and monitor extension cables running to my server so I was able to remove that rule from IPtables and re-add the correct one :)

@thither – hehe!

I recommend forcing all the fonts on the page to render as comic sans by injecting some HTML or CSS into the pages. ;)

@thither: LOL :D

I run a Linux box that does the DNS and DHCP stuff for my LAN, so I could probably do this if I configured my Access Point to be open… *bookmarks for future use* :mrgreen:

I’ve been meaning to start running upsidedownternet, but I don’t think my puny OpenWrt router has the CPU for it. If I can get it working, I may run it as an open node with essid “I enjoy reading your email”.

In that case, simple mac filtering would probably prevent nasty neighbors from “stealing the internet”.

One possible explanation for the silliness is that he/she is running some old version of Linux where encryption doesn’t work with their card. I remember a while back, WEP encryption didn’t always work. DOH!

Actually, that’s a good approach, unfortunately not always applicable. For example, some home networks are mostly wireless. I have been in households where the whole LAN consists of 3-4 laptops, 2 wireless printers and nothing else.

I treat my wireless as if it was a connection from the internet. Any computer on my wifi is NOT on my local network at home. Instead, they are behind my firewall (DMZ actually). I have an authentication mechanism in place to keep pests out.

Yup, I agree. Actually that’s what I was trying to say but it didn’t come out right. ;)

On a side note, consider this:

open wifi < MAC filtering < WEP < WPA < no wifi

Wireless security goes from 0% on the left to 100% on the right. The time and effort it takes a random wardriver to break into your network goes from 0s on the left, to ∞s on the right. Common sense suggests you want to be as far right as you can. ;)