Wireless revisited

As I recall, and have searched, seems like no one has talked much about wireless lately. With prices of new and used wireless gear - esp 802.11b going for as little as $50 for access point and pc card IM thinking of taking the plunge.

As I recall, the easiest way is to put an ethernet-based access point IN the car. Put the wireless network card in the PC, and go from there. Sounds simple enough.

Anyone make it work? What brands of access point and card? The linksys and especially D-link stuff is very affordable on ebay. It would be bets, IMO, to power the router via the amp-turn-on lead (via relay probably, how much current can the amp turn on handle?). My reasoning is I can leave the truck off, turn on the empeg - router on, and go inside. Download music, and remote turn off the empeg (can that be done?)

Since the router and empeg might not be up in a timely manner, I guess hard coding the IP's would be the way to go.

There would need to be a hack to the sled to allow ethernet, anyone done this? I know the home dock does it, so in theory I know what to do.

Comments?

i have no idea about ny of the techy stuff but the metal stuff now your talking

What i have done is put the empeg in the sledge and then marked the position of where the cable comes into the back then removed empeg and got a small stainless plate TIG welded onto the back of the sledge. Now remove the tag of the ethernet cable and fix it to the plate and there you go docked ethernet.

Easy

Why would you need a hack to the sled? There's already a hole in the sled for an ethernet cable. If you do for some reason then see the FAQ entry here.

Stu

Short of actually physically installing in the car, I've made it work. I'm using the bridges from D-Link, DWL-810. They worked out of the box on my home wireless (DHCP, no WEP) right out of the box.

-Zeke

OK, to do something entirely crazy.... My garage door is computer controllable (X10). What I want to do is a secure "auto open". That is, when the empeg (with the wireless interface) comes within range of my base station, the garage door opens.

Ideas for the easiest way to do it (with a fair level of security)?
Just pinging the empeg isn't secure enough. But maybe SSH is the way to go...

As an added bonus, I suppose I can have the system close the garage doors when the empeg dissappears (car shut down). Hmm... On second thought - I probably want to leave the empeg on to sync overnight, any ideas for how to signal "car has been shut off" over the net?

To do this, first off use WEP on your wireless network to start with. Second yes use SSH using certificate authentication so you don't have to worry about enterting passwords. In my view what would have to happen for this is:
Userland app on Empeg pings for your home machine every second on the wireless interface. Once it pings good it should connect using SSH and once it does it runs a script to open the garage door. Seems simple enough but the details (like how quickly will your wireless interface will "see" your home network when it's within range) will be enough to drive you mad. Good luck.

Well, I do use WEP already, but only to prevent my neigbor from accidentally connecting. That's pretty much all WEP is good for

You could write a daemon on the empeg that polls your home computer via ssh. Assuming your home computer isn't reachable across the Internet in general, then the only way your empeg could ever successfully make a connection is if it was within radio range. You wouldn't have to worry too much about associating with a different base station and accidentally opening your garage door while you're nowhere near home.

(If your home computer is reachable from the net, then you'd want to run ssh over a non-standard port that your firewall filters. If you had an adversary who was willing to stand next to your car, in the parking lot, and maintain a separate connection to a conspirator standing next to your garage, they could possibly convince your car that it was next to your home and get it to open your garage door remotely. Whether you think anybody might want to mount such an attack against you is another matter, of course.)

There are other risks, though. Imagine when a war-driver (or a sneaky friend of yours) associates with your in-car base station. Assuming they use the appropriate tools to get around your WEP key, now they can run emplode against your car stereo. If somebody wanted to give you a hard time, they could replace all your music with Wesley Willis.



Now, how do you propose to close your garage door? If you closed it with your normal beeper, your empeg might associate with home and helpfully open the door again for you!

You wouldn't have to worry too much about associating with a different base station and accidentally opening your garage door while you're nowhere near home.

And I can guard that by only allowing contact from behind my access point, not from the internet.

(If your home computer is reachable from the net, then you'd want to run ssh over a non-standard port that your firewall filters.

Definitely. There's a firewall towards the internet, and another towards the wireless lan. The wireless is definitely "non-trusted".

If you had an adversary who was willing to stand next to your car, in the parking lot, and maintain a separate connection to a conspirator standing next to your garage, they could possibly convince your car that it was next to your home

Ahh. The "MIG in the middle" attack! Need to use a mim-proof autentication. But in any case, I've made sure the door from the garage into the house has it's own lock, and I can have the computer raise an alarm if that dor isn't opened within a few minutes of the garage door being opened.

Imagine when a war-driver (or a sneaky friend of yours) associates with your in-car base station. Assuming they use the appropriate tools to get around your WEP key, now they can run emplode against your car stereo. If somebody wanted to give you a hard time, they could replace all your music with Wesley Willis.

Arggh! Didn't think about that possibility. I, guess putting a firewall in the car is overdoing it...

Now, how do you propose to close your garage door? If you closed it with your normal beeper, your empeg might associate with home and helpfully open the door again for you!

Suppose I could just build in a timeout. "Don't reopen the door over WLAN within 120 sec of closing it". In an emergency, I can always reopen the door with the beeper. But clearly the empeg user interface lacks the essential "open/close garage door" buttons