nanog mailing list archives

Re: WLAN shielding


From: Stephen L Johnson <stephen.johnson () mail state ar us>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:36:07 -0600


On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 12:01 -0500, Andy Grosser wrote:
Apologies in advance if this may not quite be the proper list for such a
question...

My company is investigating the use of wireless in a couple of our
conference rooms.  Aside from limiting the scope of reception with various
directional antennae, does anyone have any suggestions or pointers for
other ways to limit the propagation of signals (i.e. special shielding
paint, panels or other wall coatings)?

Unless you are going to convert the conference room into a Faraday Cage
to block all radio transmissions in or out, it's not going to be worth
the effort. And of course, a faraday cage will block cell phone
reception as well. 

You probably better off putting the access points in a DMZ type subnet
and using VPN to access the main networks. Enable WEP and shutdown SSID
broadcasting. If the radios of the access points can be controlled,
reduce the transmission power to limit signal propagation.

-- 
Stephen L Johnson                       stephen.johnson () mail state ar us
Unix Systems Administrator              sjohnson () monsters org
Department of Information Systems
State of Arkansas
501-682-4339


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