Frequently Asked ShAir™ Office Wireless Networking Product Questions

Questions:

Answers:

What is ShAir™ Office?

ShAir™ Office is a suite of resource sharing products. Four products are currently in the ShAir™ Office family: 1. Internet Gateway (MIL-W0311) 2. Wireless PCMCIA Client Adapter (MIL-W1897) 3. Wireless Internet Gateway (MIL-W1311) 4. Wireless USB Client Adapter (MIL-W1898) The MIL-W1311 is essentially an MIL-W1897 plugged into an MIL-W0311.

The firmware on the ShAir™ Office access point (MIL-W0311) has a driver specifically used with the MIL-W1897. Inserting other wireless client adapters into our router is not recommended. Only insert the MIL-W1897 into the MIL-W0311. However, other client adapters can connect wirelessly to our MIL-W1311 (MIL-W0311 with a card in it) if they are 802.11b compliant. We have tested various cards from other manufacturers like Cisco, Lucent, 3com, Symbol, and others and they have all successfully connected wirelessly to ShAir™ Office. Like all 802.11b devices, ShAir™ Office uses Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS). However, plugging them into ShAir™ Office is not supported.
In the future, if we decide to replace the MIL-W1897 with another type of PCMCIA card, we will get a firmware suited to that specific card and provide a flash upgrade utility to make the ShAir™ Office units out in the field have the appropriate driver.

ShAir™ Office has been designed to meet the rigid standards of IEEE 802.11b, which is the industry standard for 11Mb wireless products. We have tested ShAir™ Office with a wide variety of Wi-Fi compliant products including Wi-Fi products from Cisco, Proxim, 3com, Symbol, Lucent, and several others. Our ShAir™ Office product has tested successfully with those Wi-Fi compliant products. We are confident that our unit is fully compatible with other 3rd party 802.11b Wi-Fi products. In other words, ShAir™ Office is not Wi-Fi certified yet, but it is Wi-Fi compliant.

ShAir™ Office has multiple layers of security. In terms of the Internet Gateway/IP sharing, ShAir™ Office has NAT (Network Address Translation) which shields the IP addresses of your internal LAN from the outside, thus creating a firewall. There is also an Access Conrol Log that keeps track of unauthorized attempts to penetrate ShAir™ Office's firewall. ShAir™ Office also has an Internet Access Log which can record which websites users on your internal LAN or wireless LAN have visited. In addition to recording where a user has been, there is also a packet filtering table to restrict which network-based applications are available to users on the LAN and a URL filter to block certain websites completely. In regard to the Dial-in RAS aspect of ShAir™ Office, dial-in users are authenticated with a username, a password, and optionally a call-back function. Administration of the actual unit can be locked out with a password.

Data can be encrypted on the wireless LAN with a WEP key. ShAir™ Office features four 64-bit WEP keys and one 128-bit WEP key. Furthermore, access can be restricted or permitted by hardware address. Also, many of the security features in the previous Q&A are applicable to wireless LAN security as well (including the URL filter, Internet Access Log, Access Control Log, NAT, and others).

A group of cryptographers have recently cracked the WEP security on 802.11b products. However, these methods and wireless network sniffing equipment are not available to the common user, seasoned system administrators, network engineers, and most hackers. Furthermore, WEP should not be the only security measure on a network. WEP in combination with the other security features of ShAir™ Office puts very stringent barriers in front of a would-be hacker. If the hardware access control table is utilitized, an unauthorized user could not enter the wireless LAN at all unless he has the actual client adapter specified in the HAC table.

1. Ensure that the IP address of the access point and client adapter have the same network id, same subnet mask, and unique IP addresses.
2. The SSID (or ESSID) should be the same on all units. It is case sensitive.
3. Make sure that encryption is disabled. Or if you want encryption, make sure all units have the same WEP key.
4. The maximum distance cannot exceed 500 feet in a completely open environment and can be significantly less indoors and with obstruction.
5. Ensure the channel is the same on the access point and client adapters. Also, try changing all units to a different channel.
6. Microwaves and other devices operating at the 2.4 Ghz frequency may interfere with 802.11b devices.
7. If your access point or wireless client adapter is in a highly obstructedenvironment, move your unit to a different location.
8. If you are utilizing the Hardware Access Control list (HAC), make sure your client adapter is properly entered into the table.

No. Though the Configuration Utilities look very similar, the Config Utility for the MIL-W1897 is specifically for the MIL-W1897 and the Config Utility for the MIL-W1898 is specifically for the MIL-W1898.

The Hardware Access Control list is at the bottom of the Wireless configuration page. It is also known as Wireless Station Access. By entering the hardware address of your wireless client adapter, you can more stringently restrict access to the internet and the LAN in combination with the capabilities of WEP encryption. You can find more detailed instructions on the Help page. To find the hardware address of your local wireless client adapter, install it on your computer and type "ipconfig /all" at the command prompt in Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me or type "winipcfg" in Windows 95 or Windows 98. If you want to find the hardware address a remote client adapter and happen to know the IP address associated with it, just ping the IP address of the client adapter and quickly type "arp -a" to see what the hardware address is.