but those were useful features!

[cellio]

A very helpful (yes, really!) technician at Verizon diagnosed our network problems as a flaky router, so he sent us a new one and we swapped it in today. The old router had two features that I found useful: I could name devices on the network, and the "my network" list showed me everything that had connected since the last router restart, not just the currently-connected devices. These, particularly in combination, were useful for monitoring my network. (Why yes, since I can be punished for anything done from my IP address even if I didn't do or authorize it, and since no security that is still usable is perfect, I do care.)

The new router lacks both of these features; it shows currently-connected devices by MAC address (and IP address), but short of my maintaining the name-MAC mappings externally, that's of limited utility. And it doesn't tell me if a neighbor found his way onto my network while I wasn't watching. Now my neighbors seem like decent folks, and in a different legal environment I'd rather be the sort of person who shares my spare bandwidth with anybody who needs it, but that's not the point.

Oh well. I guess I am now relying more strongly on decent neighbors and passwords, as I haven't found anything like router logs that tell me this stuff.

I know that some of my readers are pretty security-conscious. How do you handle this?

Comments

[cellio]

Huh, interesting. You're not worried about somebody using your service to, say, surf child porn?

(I'm not worried about the machines on my network; those are reasonably hardened. It's the wireless itself -- or, more specifically, the data trail that could be subpoenaed from my ISP -- that I worry about.)

[dsrtao]

No. First, it's incredibly uncommon. Second, it would look fairly suspicious for anyone to park in my driveway or on the busy street in front of the house for long periods of time.

Third: AFAICT, most such criminals are caught because they are (a) reported by someone with access to their computer/s, (b) caught in a sting, or (c) involved in production. It's not random sampling of ISP traffic.

And all my porn prefences are strictly over 18, so I have no personal fear.

[goljerp]

Does anyone know if the "my wireless is wide open, it wasn't me doing ZZZZ on my IP address" defense has been used successfully?

(I know, I could probably just search Slashdot's archives... but my wireless does have a password.)