Subverse Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Ayo, having a weird issue with my wireless internet, figured a few of you guys might know more about what to do, and googling the issue has had no joy. Just set up my internet connection, I'm with slingshot, and got a Telecom wireless modem, one of those Thomson TG585 v8's. I got the net working fine, went into the modem setup page, configured my wireless network, setup a secure connection with WPA-2 PSK, set the password, blah blah. Connected to the wireless on my mac, unplugged the ethernet cable. All works fine, leave my computer for a while, it goes to sleep, when I come back and wake it up it can't reconnect to the wireless - when I go to the wireless connection menu, it says my password is wrong, although it shouldn't have changed. I can connect to the internet fine through an ethernet cable to the modem, but the problem seems to be with the wireless settings? If I go into the modem setup page, through the ethernet cable, and change the PSK, that doesn't fix the problem, but if I change the actual name of the Wireless Network, I can reconnect to it - however again, if i disconnect from the wireless network, and try to reconnect, I get the same issue. fucking frustrating. Not really sure what's going on, but hopefully its just me being stupid. Hopefully this wasn't TL:DR, as I'd love some help. hah. Any advice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Known One Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 A few options... Best bet, Update the Routers Firmware... go to the Thompson site, check the latest firmware version against your own and see if there's a newer one available. Should be some sort of file you can upload to your router via the config site... shouldn't be too hard. Reading around online, changing to WEP instead of WPA is an option to get around the issue... but I wouldn't suggest that. Unless you don't mind having an unsecured network which can be hacked in minutes. Other suggested fix is set Wireless to 802.11g only... not N. But thats just another workaround... firmware upgrade seems to be the best solution. Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subverse Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 Alright bro cheers for that - ill update the firmware and let you know how I go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subverse Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 So I've done a bit of reading, and it looks like this is a general problem related to the router and mac's - which was addressed in an update to the firmware, but the newer version of the firmware is not possible to get on the Telecom versions of the modem? according to http://blog.hosk.in/2011/01/telecom-nz-thomson-tg585v8-with-apple.html , he posted some settings which he found to work - I tried them, and they didn't give me any joy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Known One Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Try going to WEP... see if it at leasts lets to get working in some more permanent way. If it does, holla back and I'll give you some suggestions about keeping secure using WEP. Just to double check, you've gone to 802.11G/B only? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Known One Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Also, can you link me to where you read that you cannot upgrade to the latest firmware on your Telecom Router? That seems odd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subverse Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 ok bro - yeah I've got it on 802.11G/B only, and I've gone to WEP, rather than WPA. I can now turn off the wireless, and turn it back on, and it'll reconnect automatically. So it seems to have been an issue with the WPA settings... WEP sounds rediculously insecure however? http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=82788 here's the link to the discussion about not being able to upgrade firmware. Edit: So what is the actual likelihood of the wireless being hacked? I live on a suburban street in grey lynn, do I actually need to be worried about this? Is it just a matter of setting a giant character password, or does that make no difference whatsoever? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Known One Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Ah yep... In regards to WEP, it doesn't matter how large the Password is because the way that WEP works is insecure. The way a Client sends the Password over the air to the Router can be looked at by a third party... which is exactly how you crack it. You can basically spoof the Routers MAC address and SPID and send a couple of commands over the air to read the encryption key and force a particular client to re-authenticate to the router... then you just listen for the passphrase and you're in. Someone who knows what they are doing could get this done in less than 5 minutes. But in answer to your question about how likely it is to be hacked into? Pretty unlikely I would guess... I mean, unless one of your neighbors wants some free bandwidth and knows how to do it... who would have the motivation/know-how? It's probably not that much of a risk to run WEP. At least there is some sort of barrier to stop people just jumping on and using your internet connection. There's not much you can do to make WEP more secure... MAC filtering is pretty much off the table as someone could easily spoof their MAC to one you have enabled. You could periodically check the Router to see what WiFi devices are connected and just make sure no-one is leeching your net connection. Or if Slingshot has some sort of Bandwidth monitor... keep an eye on your bandwidth usage to make sure no one has bee going crazy on your connection. Best bet of coarse would be to upgrade your Routers firmware... so check the Web interface to see if it's an option. Sounds like Telecom may have removed it as an option, but only way to find out is to have a look and try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subverse Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 Cheers for the info bro, that was a big help. For a more permanent fix, I stole a relatively new belkin wireless router from a mate, using the thomson just for internet now - running that through to the router and securing the wireless with the Belkin's WPA. Bit of a workaround, but now its definitely secure, and the router is N capable or whatever so should run faster too. Felt like a technical genius when I got it sorted hah! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Known One Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Nice one, glad to help Only painful thing with putting a router behind a router is that it's harder to get things like Torrent Clients working correctly. They really need to have an inbound port available to be able to connect to all peers... often this just works because of uPnP... automatically opening a port on the router, but because you have two routers... the port needs to be opened on both routers. Otherwise, that's a great solution. If you want to know more about that side of things.... let me know and I can tell you how to setup your network for a Torrent client to work properly over the WiFi. If you aren't torrenting over Wifi it's no biggie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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