Wi-fi On Board

[Symphony]

Is anyone afraid of using unsecured wifi, opening your system to anyone who wants to see your drives?

Is anyone using a VPN with their wifi?

Are there really many unsecured signals open anymore, especially that have a good sized pipeline to handle all the bandwidth demand?

I am not finding many free and trustworthy signals in the NE US or SXM + anguilla area.

R

[Symphony]

Side note: hi Bill of BeBe. I enjoy your blog. Best wishes and fair winds to you and your wife.

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by Symphony

Is anyone afraid of using unsecured wifi, opening your system to anyone who wants to see your drives?

Is anyone using a VPN with their wifi?

Are there really many unsecured signals open anymore, especially that have a good sized pipeline to handle all the bandwidth demand?

I am not finding many free and trustworthy signals in the NE US or SXM + anguilla area.

R

There are some, but the minute anyone hops online they start watching netflix or transferring tons of data around so it screws it up for everyone. "An internet connection" now means to most people <10ms delay times and 500kb/s throughput. Per device.

[Symphony]

Originally Posted by rebel heart

There are some, but the minute anyone hops online they start watching netflix or transferring tons of data around so it screws it up for everyone. "An internet connection" now means to most people <10ms delay times and 500kb/s throughput. Per device.

You are exactly right. But the security issue is the bigger problem for me.

[svBeBe]

Originally Posted by Symphony

...

I am not finding many free and trustworthy signals in the NE US or SXM + anguilla area.

R

Ahoy Symphony!

True, things have changed in the last 6 years circumnavigating...6 years ago long range wifi was much more important. Today we mostly use while in marinas which normally provide wifi at no cost. 3G modem to the Internet is available almost everywhere. Outside the US it is common to have a "unlocked" 3G modem and buy SIM cards and prepay for usage...works great.

Bill

[Multihull]

What security issue?

You should guard your devices with security software and a firewall.

The unsecured connection to the rest of the world is not relevant.

Rob

[thinwater]

Also consider an air card. I would it to be more dependable and easier. But that will vary, I suppose.

[sailcruiser]

Originally Posted by Symphony

Is anyone afraid of using unsecured wifi, opening your system to anyone who wants to see your drives?

Is anyone using a VPN with their wifi?

Are there really many unsecured signals open anymore, especially that have a good sized pipeline to handle all the bandwidth demand?

I am not finding many free and trustworthy signals in the NE US or SXM + anguilla area.

R

Symphony,
Most operating systems have built in firewalls that would block anyone from exploring your drives. There are also third party solutions as well. A better solution is a router that supports NAT ( network address translation) with a built in firewall. You'd be safe behind such a router.

A VPN would probably drive you batty with available bandwidth. It would also be a pain to administer remotely. A possible similar idea would be an encrypted proxy. These are still slow but it may ease your fears. I haven tried one from the Caribbean but I know it's slowin the states. The free ones are pitifully slow because they lack bandwidth for all the users. There are plenty of choices to pay for. A google search will point you to hundreds.

Just know that any transaction done over SSL (https://) is encrypted. Most email, banking and bill type transactions is encrypted or should be.
SC

[sailcruiser]

Originally Posted by colemj

Engenius?

Mark

I think it was the plain unaltered ubiquity solution. I've got some bandwidth issues so hard to figure out right now. I am completely comfortable in configuring networks. SC

[AnchorageGuy]

Originally Posted by Symphony

Is anyone afraid of using unsecured wifi, opening your system to anyone who wants to see your drives?

Is anyone using a VPN with their wifi?

Are there really many unsecured signals open anymore, especially that have a good sized pipeline to handle all the bandwidth demand?

I am not finding many free and trustworthy signals in the NE US or SXM + anguilla area.

R

We still finds many, many open wifi APs and we have cruised the Gulf coast from Houston to the Keys and the east coast from the Chesapeake to the Keys. On both those trips we can probably count three time we could not find a wifi AP. We often get hotels, coffee shops, libraries, etc. All on on the boat available from our former USB adapter and current Bullet. We have not seen a major difference between the two at this point in time. We do run a VPN whenever we are on line, even at the marinas as we are now. We also use a firewall program and other utilities. We did a posting on our set up on our blog at, The Trawler Beach House: Open WiFi On The Boat And Firesheep And Other Man-made Disasters explaining just what we use. I do have a question for the forum. How many of YOU, Not a friend of a cousins sister, had your computer hacked from using an open wifi connection. we ran this system for years without the VPN and other security measures and never had a problem. But times change and the hackers get more sophisticated. Chuck

[Symphony]

Thanks for the link to your blog, Chuck. Your simple wifi system interests me greatly. Your blog is well written and I recommend reading about your simple wifi system to anyone interested in this thread.

I am not 100% certain but believe my wife's laptop was infiltrated on an open network. We do not run an antenna booster since we can send email via cellphone, and we only surf the net when anchored. My wife also likes her Facebook and YouTube a lot, but none of this critical so I haven't bothered with an external wifi antenna, tether, or router onboard.

We use 64 bit IE browser so no worry about Firesheep. At home we are behind a router firewall and WPA, but on the boat we use the windows defender firewall. Patches and updates are all current and passwords are strong. my employer provides Symantec endpoint updated constantly.

After using an open network near mystic, ct my wife's hotmail was hijacked. Sad to lose an account name 16 years old and have all her friends spammed. Upon learning this I scanned her laptop with Malwarebytes and kasperksy and found a Trojan. Difficult to remove bugger too.

I cannot guarantee that her computer was attacked while on that open net but we have never had the problem before or since.

We now use Cisco VPN (from my employer. They require any wifi device on campus to go through VPN since parts of the email and network are not SSL) or if my wife really wants to FB, or we need to do online banking we go to a marina with wifi protected by a password. I also pulled tax returns off her laptop and keep them on a LaCie drive. It is also nice in that abstinence from the WWW is nice and I enjoy being with my wife swinging from the hook instead of us both reading blogging (ha! Like I am now).

Since Chuck and others are reporting many open sites still can be reached if you have the right antenna I will reconsider making a wifi antenna to feed a router and hardware firewall, especially since I will be in the market in the next year to replace my 12 year old raymarine system. The new wifi NMEA devices and iPad terminals will hopefully drop in price by 50% by then.

Fair seas. May the spring come early.

[AnchorageGuy]

Thanks for your reply. We have upgraded so to speak, to a Bullet, I have not had the time to post it on the blog yet. We have been using it for several months now and I don't see a lot of difference from our USB set up. Maybe later when we are in fringe areas it will make a difference. For now, my side by side tests have produced the same APs with the Bullet and the Engenius USB adapter. We used both to test them on our recent trip from the Chesapeake to Florida. The Bullet is a lot more to set up and get running with our Cradlepoint Router. The USB Adapter is pretty much plug and play, the Bullet takes some programming. We have found available APs when we didn't have cell phone coverage. Chuck

[osirissail]

I find it amazing but not unusual that folks are willing to pay three to four times the cost of the parts than if you purchased them direct. Of course, somebody else is putting the parts together for you and you end up with a "plug and play."

But personally, I am just downright cheap and can't see paying that kind of money for something I can assemble myself for a fourth of the cost.

But if you want to go with the "plug and play" stuff just be sure it contains CAT 5E and POE components if you are going to mount the units any further than 15 feet or so from your computer. Indoor cable does not hold up in the sea environment so be sure the package has "outdoor/direct burial/UV resistant" cable. The indoor cable you can get from Home Depot for about $17 but the outdoor stuff needs to be ordered on-line and can run $75 for 75 feet or so.

[christinekling]

During the last eight months I traveled from Florida to the Abacos, to the Chesapeake and back to Lauderdale. I have a Bullet and was quite pleased with it. In the Abacos, I paid for OII connections. If I wanted to do banking, I connected through my 12V router, but when in the states, I stopped using the router altogether because of the issues of additional current draw. It was easier (and drew fewer amps) to go directly to the computer. I have a 3G iPad and I used it when I was concerned about security in the US. I could find an unsecured connection strong enough to pull in email in almost every anchorage. As far as I know at this point, I have not had any security issues. I was warned by the marina management in New Smyrna Beach that there was a site ghosting the marina's name and set-up - i.e. New Smyrna Beach Marina Guest - that was not a legitimate site, so clearly there are folks out there who have figured out that yachts are good prey. So far, knock wood, I haven't had any problems, but I am fairly careful.

[christinekling]

Originally Posted by osirissail

I find it amazing but not unusual that folks are willing to pay three to four times the cost of the parts than if you purchased them direct. Of course, somebody else is putting the parts together for you and you end up with a "plug and play."

First of all, your quote of 3-4 times is a bit off base. You quote $75 for the Cat-5 cable, then add about $70 for the Bullet. Then let's add $25-$50 for the 8db antenna, depending on what you buy. Then you need the bracket to attach the antenna somewhere, so let's add another $20. So you are looking at around $200 for the DIY version, and I got the Rogue Wave that retails for $350 with easier to use firmware and loads of tech support. Seems to me that I spent more like 1.5 to 2 times the cost of the parts. And it was plug and play, so instead of spending several hours setting it up, I was able to spend those hours writing my books which earns me money.

I'm cheap, too, and I figured that this was a better use of my time and money.