Voluntarily sharing my home network

The comfort I get from asking dumb questions is knowing that somewhere out there somebody else probably has a same or similar question but wouldn't ask.... so I don't mind admitting my ignorance.

The question. I'm about to set up a network from desktop to laptop. I own and live in one half of a duplex, and rent the other half out. I have no doubt that my tenants (if they have wireless) could probably acess my wireless once it's up. In fact, the room where the router will be will share a wall with the other half of the house.

I'm very picky about tenants--I trust the ones I have, but they'll be moving to another city next August. I'm debating whether to mention availability of a free network as an incentive for tenants I might want, and/or letting my current tenants know that a network is available. I might add that I keep the rent below market in a very desireable area specifically because I am VERY choosy about tenants...I do, after all, share a wall.

Are there any serious disadvantages to allowing my tenants to access my network?

If I don't WANT them to access it, is there a way I can block them from doing so?

Anything else I should consider?

Thanks.

 

See my reply to your other post, Clare. By putting encryption on your WLAN, you can hide it from people you do not want accesing it. You could technically give the encryption key and the network name to your tenant, and it could be accesed by them, but not anyone else "unwanted".

 

yes, by allowing them access to your network, you are leaving a door open for anything on your network. this means that your hard drive is vulnerable so if you have any personal information on there (financial info, personal info, email addresses, etc.), it's up for grabs. also, if someone who enjoys downloading movies/music illegally, they can hop onto your network and do so which will result in serious bandwidth loss for yourself and potential litigation if a copyright holder thinks that you are responsible for the illegal download.

 

..very good reasons to keep it to myself. Thanks.

 

wait a minute...isn't there a big difference between offer a FREE internet hookup via wireless...and a being on the same network... I mean if you set your workgroup name to some kind of obscure name, and prevent file and printer sharing...i doubt it's a problem for someone to share your internet...

Lol, in fact that's the probelm i have now...able to share internet, but can't share files

 

oh but i don't argue the downloading thing...if you can't stand that...then by all means don't advertise

 

if i'm jacked into the same router you are and on the same side of the router; your stuff is mine. in the OSI stack, you're talking about stuff at the application layer... grabbing data doesn't need to go that high, you can grab data at the network layer.

 

If you are good enough at that, that is, and we know most people aren't, otherwise we will have hackers for neighbours, and firewall companies will earn big bucks. Haha.

 

Well, I'm not taking any chances, though if the neighbors with the two unsecured networks that show up when I log on were hackers, they probably would have secured THEIR networks.

 

I would only give it out, if you have a router behind yours protecting your personal network, where the shared wireless is almost more of a DMZ. I would then use WPA for encryption.

 

WPA is the best way to go. Just make a long passphrase, use it, and forget it. It should be random jibberish. Hackers can't crack WPA like they can WEP, hidden SSID, and mac address filtering, so WPA is good. Many hackers use Linux Auditor (my CpE friends) to do anything they want.

 

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