Having a home wireless network allows you and those living with you the luxury of being able to connect to the computers on your network as well as connecting directly to the internet. As technology continues to advance, more and more devices are becoming WiFi capable, making wireless routers a necessity in nearly any networking scenario. With the benefits of WiFi also come the risk of unwanted individuals and devices accessing your network without your permission.

Accessing Your Wireless Network

When making security changes to your wireless network, the computer being used to make such changes will need to be plugged directly into the router using CAT5 cable. This will allow you to change any of the wireless setting without bumping yourself off the connection and requiring you to adjust your configuration to match the changes. To get started:

• Open up your web browser of choice and enter in http://192.168.1.1 (this may vary depending on which router, but is usually the same)
• Each router will have it’s own default username and password listed in the book or on the router. Many routers default to username: username and password: password. Enter this information in the prompt.

Change Your Settings

The first change you should always make is to your administrative username and password. Changing them away from the default prevents roaming individuals from being able to access your settings. Make sure you write this information down. Below is a list of options found in the wireless tab of your routers control panel that are available to you for customization depending on how detailed you would like your security to be:

• SSID - The name given to your router. The default is often the manufacturers name. Changing this isn’t purely cosmetic, as you can actually hide it so it won’t broadcast but can be called upon by anyone who knows what it’s name is.
• Encryption Settings - While there are numerous choices depending on your hardware, you’ll want to pick either Wireless Equivalent Protection (WEP) or WPA. While WPA is stronger, not all cards and routers support it. Once you select the method of encryption, it will provide you with a randomly generated password. Write this down and make sure everyone who will be sharing your network will have it as well or they won’t be able to access it anymore.
• MAC Address Filtering - Each network card in the computers connecting to your home network has it’s own unique MAC address. You can find yours by opening command prompt and typing in “ipconfig/all”. Find your wireless lan card and right near it you will see its assigned MAC address. Enter that address and the address of the other systems you would like allowed access into the filtering settings.

The best course of action is to utilize all three options here instead of just one, but in the case of internet security, one is better than nothing.