What is he doing on my WIFI ??

[gawguy]

I have a new roommate. He is in USA and I am in LOS at the moment. I have wifi set up in the living room and part of our agreement that I advertised, is the wifi would be included in the rent at a charge.

 

He has some kind of IT Business and may be very sophisticated. He is also finacilly marginal and very much stays to himself. This is fine, but he uses wifi under my name. If he were doing something illegal it could be traced to me.

 

My g/f reported that he ran a cable from the cable modem in the living room into his room the other day. She was unable to access wifi from my room. He said he was downloading a file.

 

His wifi works. What reason would he have for running a wire? I don't trust him yet.

 

Also, when I go on wifi at home am I vulnerable to him picking anything off transmissions? Does he have any more access because he is on the same modem / wifi router ? I need to guard against ID theft and bank acct theft.

 

Thanks for your help on this one.

It's important.

 

Gaw Guy

[Faustian]

Why not ask him? You do seem rather troubled...why not just remove the wifi access...?

[rchapstick]

It is possible he ran the cable to get a faster transmission speed (WiFi can be fast, but it is not THAT fast).

 

I believe that, if he is doing something illegal (e.g. downloading songs), then his activity would be traced to the IP address assigned to his PC.

Assuming you have your GF as witness, and (hopefully) a lease agreement allowing him internet access, then I can hardly see how you could be held responsible for his activities. Any more than a public WiFi site (like an ariport) could be held accountable for the activites of their customers using their wifi access.

 

Is your computer accessible on your LAN? That, to me, would be a more pressing matter, as he could bypass the router's firewall and access your machine.

 

As suggested above, talk tot he guy to find out whats up.

[Barry]

From the outside world, both PCs would appear to be the same machine. Only the IP of the router would be visible.

If he was doing something illegal, it wouldn't necessarily go against you. The authorities would inspect all machines that used that network.

I think you should ask him not to do that again if it means your gf can't get online. Just because you aren't there, doesn't mean he gets to take over.

[Weird]

From the outside world, both PCs would appear to be the same machine. Only the IP of the router would be visible.

 

This is not necessarily true.

 

Here is one small example.

 

http://www.stayinvisible.com/cgi-bin/iptest.cgi

[Barry]

From the outside world' date=' both PCs would appear to be the same machine. Only the IP of the router would be visible.

[/quote']

 

This is not necessarily true.

 

Here is one small example.

 

http://www.stayinvisible.com/cgi-bin/iptest.cgi

 

Was way off on mine.. Though it did get my provider.

 

People using a home router will usually have an address like 172.16.1.2 on their actual machine.

[shygye]

Cheap wifi routers are poor performers on transferring large files.

[bust]

What's Wifi... Anything like Airport Express?

[Weird]

Was way off on mine.. Though it did get my provider.

 

People using a home router will usually have an address like 172.16.1.2 on their actual machine.

 

or 192.168.x.x which is the default for the majority of home routers I've come across. It was merely one of many possible ways for somebody to get information on a web surfer

[not5150]

Why not simply ask him?

 

There's nothing suspicious about running a cable from a router, rather than using the wi-fi. It actually shows that your roommate has a bit of computer smarts.

 

There are numerous reasons for using the cable

 

1. Lower latency - direct connection to the router rather than fighting all the other wireless users for bandwidth.

2. He could be gaming... playing certain games like World of Warcraft over wifi can be painful. Yes it can be done, but serious gamers want to squeeze every last millisecond from a connection.

3. Bittorrent - a direct connection makes this MUCH faster

 

Consumer routers typically add the wifi feature as an afterthought.. so usually the range and speeds are just enough to make one person happy.

 

Did you enable WPA encryption or at least WEP on your router? If not, maybe that's another reason he's using a direct connection.

 

Speaking as a computer guy, there's absolutely wrong with having a direction connection. Heck if you were my roommate, I'd be looking at your strangely for using the wireless.

 

Here's just one of MANY articles on the net about wireless (in)security - http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34324/108/