You might be asking the wrong people :-)

You probably want to know the password, if the wifi is secured and firewalled and if connections are logged.

This will, in order, allow you access, determine if there are reasonable security measures besides password and if they're tracking your internet usage.

Yeah, but if I go to AskMe, the responses will be all "First find out if you meet the Squarble protocol at 813.000.35 bigs. If you do, insert your WAN-TRAN into the overlord. Then the real work begins."

I need someone to talk to me like I'm stupid. You guys are willing to do that, right?

Those sound like two good questions. Probably the only two I would ask.

On lack of preview: plinth! You're the man! woman! gender-unspecified! usually square or rectangular flat display surface! That's a great starting point. Thanks!

Should I also ask what kind of connection it uses and whether there's a download limit?

- Who's paying for this WiFi? The landlords? Is this utility cost being split amongst the residents?

- If the landlords are footing the bill, are they tracking your usage? Will you get punished for downloading too much?

- If you're splitting the bill, will you get recompense if someone else is hogging all the bandwidth?

- Where does it work? I assume they didn't string WiFi routers throughout the whole building, so maybe it only works by the pool, or near the manager's office.

I'm sure it's just the bog standard connection. If you're picking up three, you just need to know which one it is and what the password is. The d/l limit will have to be shared between everyone using it; a tough thing to track!

It's a small building, just five apartments in a converted house, so it's possible (uh, isn't it? I guess I'm not sure) that a couple of routers could handle the whole building. The implication, which I'll certainly confirm, is that the landlords are providing it.

This was mentioned in one sentence ("Wifi is now available to all residents!") in a letter detailing new storage units, storm windows, and other building notices, which suggests to me that the landlords are as clueless about wireless as I am. I'm drafting an email to them now, in which I'll ask questions. What I have so far:

- Is the WiFi service included in our rent, or is there a charge for use?
- What's the name of the network?
- Do we need a password?
- Is the wifi secured and firewalled?
- Does it log connections, and is there a download or upload limit?

Thanks for helping me out with this, and for any other suggestions!

First find out if you meet the Squarble protocol at 813.000.35 bigs. If you do, insert your WAN-TRAN into the overlord. Then the real work begins. - mentally faved

The firewall question you can answer for yourself, if you see that your DHCP assigned address, when you get a WiFi connection, by running

ipconfig /all

command in a DOS, or "command prompt" window, is in Private IP address space. If your wireless IP address is in one of the linked address blocks, the device supplying your WiFi service is at least doing NAT, which is the lowest form of "firewall" in general use, and about 70% of known IP exploits will fail, as a result of that. Doing further "firewall" functions, such as stateful packet inspection, takes progressively greater hardware resources, so in a "free" service environment, such as might be supplied by a cheap SoHo level wireless router, for a small building, I wouldn't expect much.

What's far more important, and entirely optional on the part of your landlord, depending on the router hardware the landlord is using, is whether or not wireless clients are isolated on individual vlans. If wireless clients on your landlord's WiFi aren't vlan (pronounce "vee-lan") isolated, you should assume that any script kiddie visiting your neighbors, or parked outside your building, can read all your unencrypted Internet traffic, with nothing more esoteric than a free download of Ethereal. Don't do anything on an unencrypted connection over a wireless network you wouldn't want your worst enemies to know about, unless you have better knowledge than you appear to have of this wireless network's end-to-end security management.

You can laugh about the non-trivial nature of WiFi security, and those of us who take it a bit more seriously, as much as you like. So, I suspect, did a former neighbor of mine, until I went over and had a conversation with her, that included a fair amount of her personal password information, and site usage, gleaned off her unsecured WiFi network by simple Ethereal logging, as I was trying to pin down the unidentified interfering signal source she was radiating, for my own wireless network. All I really wanted to do was to suggest she change her router's frequency bands to something other than the ones I was using, and encrypt her traffic, but she blanched white early in our discussion, and I think she never really heard my points, thereafter.

Her WiFi network disappeared from the list of those I can detect from my home immediately, and she moved two months later, so I'll never know, really, what she took from our short discussion. The guy who is renting that house now has a much better grasp of the issues, and we get along fine, and reasonably securely. He could be a child pornographer, for all I know from his WiFi use, and I, for my part, am confident he doesn't know whether I am, or not.

Paul, it sounds like you scared the living shit out of your ex-neighbour! Thanks for the app.

You can laugh about the non-trivial nature of WiFi security, and those of us who take it a bit more seriously, as much as you like.

paulsc, I think if you reread my words, you'll see that the only thing I'm laughing at is the seeming impossibility of bridging the gap between what I know and what I need to know. I asked for a basic starting point so I can figure out how to grapple with this, and I'm grateful to everyone for the help.