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Thread: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

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    FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Talking to the VIRGIN MEDIA technical team about a problem I am having - to a chap call DAREOS who I think is on this forum

    My wired network in my house was crossing over and connecting to my neighbours Virgin Media router - which I was then able to access.

    It has become apparent that the Homeplug Powerline units I use in my home were somehow connecting to the Powerline plugs my neighbours use, so providing the crossover between our networks. I cannot imagine how this is happening as we do not share electrical cables (as far as we know!)

    When I installed my Powerline units, I applied security setting using the powerline utility software. However, this was over 2 years ago, and maybe they had been reset to the default somewhere along the way (in a power outage??) I have now reapplied security measures to my two powerline units using the software utility. It seems that this has successfully separated our network from our neighbours as I can no longer access his router.

    I will monitor this over the next few days and repost if it seems to have solved the problem fully.

    My other idea was to change the DCHP of my virgin router to be on a subnet of 192.168.1.xxx rather than the default 192.168.0.xxx - but I cannot see that the Virgin Super hub router will allow me to do that.

    Cheers

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    Nefarious Networker Dareos's Avatar
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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Thanks for this

    Its definitely something to watch for with these adapters, some older terraced houses have a trunk cable providing electricity to all houses in the row and looks like the powerline adapters cant differentiate as to which circuit breaker etc the signal is coming from, since heard of people on the same substation actually having this issue.

    Powerline adapters suddenly not looking so secure in some places.
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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Modern houses are generally wired in each of the three phases alternately, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 etc ... Means that yer neighbour 3 doors away could share.

    Using Homegroup *might* fix this.
    Cheers, David



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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Makes you wonder on the path the data takes too, wouldnt like to think that signals sent from one room to another route via a local substation and all the various interferences involved on that route.

    Homegroup would tie the compuiters in together Dave, but not sure it would involve the router/hub, might do if DHCP was supplied by a machine on the homegroup rather than a separate device.

    Interesting issue imo, which is why I asked for it to be posted here, want to see peoples ideas on this.
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    Quote Originally Posted by this_is_gav View Post
    How do you change the height of them?

    I've just had a quick fiddle with the knob at the front :\

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Room to room wouldn't go via a subststion (unless the rooms were on different phases)

    However different houses on the same phase is entirely possible - there is nothing in the consumer unit specifically designed to block a home plug signal.

    The only way to keep the signal from traversing the consumer unit would be to install a low pass filter in the mains supply.

    From the point of view of data security, anything using ssl (internet banking, for example) would be no more vulnerable than an unprotected wi-fi connection, as the data to/from the server will be encrypted. However, unencrypted data could potentially be intercepted.

    However, afaik, home plug data is encrypted over the home plug link, so that provides a degree of additional security, depending on key length and key uniqueness.

    Interesting article here

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug
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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Doesn't suprise me this happend - it is afterall in the specs that the plugs will connect to any open network.



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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    Room to room wouldn't go via a subststion (unless the rooms were on different phases)

    However different houses on the same phase is entirely possible - there is nothing in the consumer unit specifically designed to block a home plug signal.

    The only way to keep the signal from traversing the consumer unit would be to install a low pass filter in the mains supply.

    From the point of view of data security, anything using ssl (internet banking, for example) would be no more vulnerable than an unprotected wi-fi connection, as the data to/from the server will be encrypted. However, unencrypted data could potentially be intercepted.

    However, afaik, home plug data is encrypted over the home plug link, so that provides a degree of additional security, depending on key length and key uniqueness.
    I protect my wireless network with the security options in the VM Superhub. But are you saying that my wired data is just not secure even if I have changed the default password on the Powerline Homeplugs, using a long complex key? That would be very worrying to me.

    And how do I install a low pass filter on the mains supply? Is that something I plug the Homeplugs into that then plugs into the mains? I am keen to make my wired network secure but I am not clear on how to do it...

    Many thanks for your interest and replies

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    As Peter mentions in the final paragraph, the home plug encryption provides an additional layer of security.

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    As Peter mentions in the final paragraph, the home plug encryption provides an additional layer of security.
    Thanks Jim. Forgive me as I am not at the same level of techiness as all you people on this forum....

    If the password on my two homeplugs provides encryption of the data passing between my two homeplugs, so no-one can see data I am sending around my network. But does that password protection also prevent my neighbour from seeing into my network via his homeplug which can clearly connect to my homeplugs?

    Would changing my sub domain from 192.168.0.xxx to 192.168.1.xxx help matters?

    Sorry for being slow here.

    Thanks

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Quote Originally Posted by Hustiniano View Post
    Thanks Jim. Forgive me as I am not at the same level of techiness as all you people on this forum....

    If the password on my two homeplugs provides encryption of the data passing between my two homeplugs, so no-one can see data I am sending around my network. But does that password protection also prevent my neighbour from seeing into my network via his homeplug which can clearly connect to my homeplugs?

    Would changing my sub domain from 192.168.0.xxx to 192.168.1.xxx help matters?

    Sorry for being slow here.

    Thanks
    The short of this is that I don't know, as I haven't looked into the security of homeplugs.

    My belief, based on the information so far, which may well be wrong:

    If you and your neighbour share power cabling, then as mentioned earlier, the homeplugs could cross over and share connections with each other. If, however, you have them encrypted, then any information shared is encrypted and without the key your neighbour will just see the encrypted data - effectively nothing.

    With wireless, we're all familiar with this scenario - we need to encrypt our data streams as anyone with a WiFi receiver can pick up and steal our data.

    On the flipside, with ethernet wiring, we're not familiar with it. Typically, you don't expect someone to intercept your ethernet communications, as someone would have to sneak in and start changing your wires around, so they aren't typically encrypted (banks and so on will use SSL, but that's a side matter).

    The issue is that typically, you can treat powerline like ethernet wiring if you like - nobody can pry, so you don't need to encrypt it. The problem with this is that if your power lines are shared, which isn't standard, then all of a sudden your "closed" network becomes "open", and has more in common with a wireless connection - anyone who has access to the line can look at your data. Therefore, although you might not originally anticipate it, you might need to use encryption.

    Very few people avoid using wireless over security concerns - they trust the encryption to protect them. And therefore you can behave similarly with regard to the homeplugs. It's just a concern that people might not have realised they ought to have.

    As for changing the subdomain, I guess it would help if nobody was using encryption, to ensure that your networks didn't suffer from cross-traffic. But logically, you would use encryption, and then it's irrelevant.

    This could all be total drivel, but it's what I understand to be the case - primarily from the investigative work of previous posters, but hopefully reasonably easy to understand! Probably not though!

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Thanks Jim - your points are very clear and logical.
    If the Homeplug encryption is as good as my wireless encryption, and both do the same job to stop anyone accessing data on my network, then I am OK with that. As you say, I am OK woth the wireless access being protected that way.

    I am just still slightly nervous as we all seem to be "assuming" a bit here. I guess I need the Homeplug manufacturers to confirm our assumptions - so I shall see if I can get that confirmation from somewhere - and repost what I find

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    Re: FOA DAREOS - Powerline Crossover problems with neighbours

    Quote Originally Posted by Hustiniano View Post
    Thanks Jim. Forgive me as I am not at the same level of techiness as all you people on this forum....

    If the password on my two homeplugs provides encryption of the data passing between my two homeplugs, so no-one can see data I am sending around my network. But does that password protection also prevent my neighbour from seeing into my network via his homeplug which can clearly connect to my homeplugs?

    Would changing my sub domain from 192.168.0.xxx to 192.168.1.xxx help matters?

    Sorry for being slow here.

    Thanks
    As long as the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 which seems more likely, then yes that will fix it and the networks will be unable to talk to eachother.
    But the fact that someone is on the same physical network worrys me, especially as there should be a encryption password that allows you to seperate powerline networks which does not seem to be working for you.

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