Secure Wireless Network FAQ:
I have Cox Communications Cable/Internet Service and a Motorola Cable Modem/Wireless Router Combo. I am able to connect to this connection with the 2 laptops and xboxlive in my apartment, but would like to secure the network so no one else besides those in my household can use it. Can you please give me directions or a specific website to do this?
I have Cox Communications Cable/Internet Service and a Motorola Cable Modem/Wireless Router Combo. I am able to connect to this connection with the 2 laptops and xboxlive in my apartment, but would like to secure the network so no one else besides those in my household can use it. Can you please give me directions or a specific website to do this?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You need to do the following things:
1) Give your WiFi network a non-standard and difficult to guess name.
2) Configure it not to broadcast its SSID.
3) Turn on WPA (or even better – WPA2) encryption, if the devices support it. Note that WEP encryption is insecure and easily broken – avoid it, if you can.
4) Configure your WiFi router to use MAC filtering – i.e., allow connections only from devices with particular MAC addresses – those of the computers on your network,
How exactly you should implement the above things depends on your WiFi devices (router and access cards) – consult their manuals.
The above setup is about as secure as you can get on a WiFi network. Sadly, it is not unbreakable – the SSID can be discovered, the WPA encryption can be broken, the MAC addresses can be spoofed. But doing all these things is quite difficult and a casual attacker is likely to move to a less secure target.
I’m guessing you just want to make sure your neighbor can’t access your Internet connection. As the other answer suggests the best methods in order of ease are to use encryption, preventing the broadcast of your wireless network name, and MAC Filtering.
I doubt anybody will take the time to hack your network if you just enable the encryption and especially if you implement MAC filtering.
Visit the source below to get a detailed tutorial on how to do this.