The D-Link DWL-800AP+ as a wireless repeater to extend wireless range – Part 4
Ok, so now I had to add the new D-Link’s MAC address to the list of authorized MAC’s in the Linksys WAP11 (v. 1.1) For this, I call on wap11gui. Used to (since I use linux), I would have to suffer through a Windows boot on the laptop and balance the laptop on the edge of the bed and connect through usb to the linksys… now I can just administer it from my desk. Nice… Anyway, I log into that and Visit the “security” tab and “Authorized Mac”, and add the d-Link DWL-800AP+ to the list.
The MAC address for the d-link is on the bottom of the box, or an arping could find it as well. Once that was done I reset the linksys and everything started working. It was very smooth. However there are now concerns that I need to deal with. It doesn’t look as though the D-Link has support for restricting access by MAC address. I’ve looked several times through the web configuration and can’t seem to find that. So, it would seem to me that my MAC filtering may be easily bypassed…
IF an unauthorized MAC address used the D-link as it’s wireless access point, the linksys would approve access because it would see the D-Link’s MAC address. So it’s time to encrypt… The most compatible at this point across all my hardware is still WEP. (WPA would be nice, but WEP will work.) WEP encryption can be broken in about 5 minutes for someone that’s interested in breaking it, but for most purposes WEP should be enough of a discouragement to encourage someone to move along to lower hanging fruit.