Subject: Please make sure that you do not run your WLAN in ad hoc mode

From: Pekka Nikander <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:05:45 -0800

It would be nice if people did not run their WLAN cards in Ad Hoc mode.

Here are MAC addresses of some cards that I currently see advertising  
various ad hoc networks.  At least some of these were present also in  
yesterday's plenary.

Network name   MAC

Netgear        02-00-10-62-A3-6D
IETF64         02-00-31-9B-69-47
Netgear        02-00-61-76-D2-79
linksys        02-0C-F1-EC-CF-9E
TC_2           02-0E-35-03-D4-C4
IETF64         02-12-F0-00-33-FD
wireless       02-27-97-94-65-56

If you don't know how to check your MAC address or how not to turn  
off ad-hoc capability, it may be better to turn off WLAN altogether.

Thank you,

--Pekka Nikander

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:12:22 -0500

This seems to be a recurring problem at every recent IETF, regardless of 
host and AP vendor. Maybe 802.11b is just not suitable for our STA 
density. Is there a way to VLAN these MAC addresses into the "get a 
clue" web page redirector?

One would hope that none of these adhoc mode laptops have malicious MiM 
intent.

Pekka Nikander wrote:
> If you don't know how to check your MAC address or how not to turn  off 
> ad-hoc capability, it may be better to turn off WLAN altogether.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> --Pekka Nikander
> 
>

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:26:19 -0800 (PST)

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:

> This seems to be a recurring problem at every recent IETF, regardless of host 
> and AP vendor. Maybe 802.11b is just not suitable for our STA density. Is 
> there a way to VLAN these MAC addresses into the "get a clue" web page 
> redirector?

You can,(we've done it in the past) but since they're not actually 
connected to the network when they're misbehaving it doesn't buy you much 
until they fix their card, sleep their laptop, or reboot.

Having done some testing with various Operating systems wireless 
implmentations, I think we can say with some degree of confidence the 
instigating hosts are generally windows 2000 machines, it could be time to 
upgrade because the winxp ndis wireless drivers won't do this without some 
coaxing. Or, I'd be happy to hand out knoppix cd's to anyone who wants 
one.

> One would hope that none of these adhoc mode laptops have malicious MiM 

It's seems unlikely that they are even aware. More than likely however 
some of the people experiencing intermittent connectivty issues are the 
source of a number of the problem hosts.

Good wireless hygiene starts with end users.

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Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       [email-masked]
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