WLAN shielding

Wed Nov 26 17:36:07 UTC 2003

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 at mail.state.ar.us
Unix Systems Administrator              sjohnson at monsters.org
Department of Information Systems
State of Arkansas
501-682-4339