General Wireless LAN Use

This document describes how to use the WLAN network in CUBINlab. For research and experimental related usage, it may be more appropriate to utilise the CUBINlab WLAN Testbed.

As a general note, the WLAN access points simply act as a bridge between the WLAN backbone of the network and the wireless nodes. The WLAN backbone is kept totally separate from the rest of the network for reasons of security. All user traffic to and from the core network is blocked, except secure protocols such as SSH and the Point to Point Tunelling Protocol (PPTP) used by our Virtual Private Network.

As with the rest of the network, WLAN nodes are configured with an IP address, hostname, gateway, DNS server list, etc., automatically via DHCP. Please ensure that your operating system is set up to retrieve these parameters via DHCP otherwise your machine may not work as expected.

Once your machine has the required IP address (and other parameters), you may freely use the SSH protocol to the following hosts only:

• ssh.cubinlab.ee.unimelb.edu.au (currently an alias for emu.cubinlab.ee.unimelb.edu.au)
• mudguard.ee.unimelb.edu.au
• mundook.cs.mu.oz.au

These hosts are allowed while others blocked to allow limited connectivity to the Intranet over secure channels for those who either do not have accounts, or do not wish to use the VPN. Since these hosts are already visible to the public Internet, there is no additional security risk introduced by the CUBINlab WLAN.

Note: Do not be alarmed if you cannot ping or traceroute to hosts from a WLAN node. These protocols have also been blocked by the CUBINlab firewall to prevent DoS attacks, etc. If using the VPN, ping and traceroute functionality will be restored via the encrypted channel.