Next doors Wireless....Stop school laptops connecting

[LordNewton]

Windows XP Sp 3 Clients, 2003 DC, windows zero wireless config

 

The laptops at the school keep connecting to someone elses wireless network (and so by-passing the school filtering)

 

Is there any way to tell Windows to only connect to the schools wlan? (im ignoring the fact that teachers take the laptops home)

[elsiegee40]

Write a politely worded letter and pop it through the door of houses bordering the school advising them to set passwords on their wifi to stop them having their download limits breached.

[Pete10141748]

This blog post tells you one thing you could do; How can I block neighboring wireless networks?

 

It's pretty simply stuff, but it won't prevent the staff/kids from manually choosing to switch to the unprotected network.

 

Find out who's network it is, and tell them to password protect it! Failing that, hop onto their wireless and start downloading, or gain access to their router and set a password for them!* ;P

 

 

*note: I don't actually advocate doing this.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Pete10141748

[tigerstar]

You're better off locking down the laptops through group policy. You might stop one potential loophole by persuading the neighbours to secure their networks, but what's to stop a kid setting up a mobile hotspot on their smartphone and going out via 3G? You can push out a configuration via a GPO, setting all the relevant configuration options in one fell swoop. More in this article:

 

Ultimate wireless security guide: Automatic PEAP deployment with Microsoft Active Directory GPO | TechRepublic

[tom_newton]

Welcome to Code Red Systems - Code Red Site <- spoken to these guys... never used it.

[Michael]

As a goodwill gesture, you could work out who the wireless network belongs to and secure it for them. This would quickly resolve your issues and keep everything working as it should.

 

The number of unsecured or poorly secured wireless networks out there is incredible in my experience.

[Ignatius]

As a slight sideline, I saw an article last week which said that the police in one of the states in Australia were to start wardriving, looking for non-secured networks in residential areas then finding the owner (presumably by connecting to the AP, checking the public IP address then contacting the ISP) and advise them accordingly.