LostInTechnology

How To Secure Your Wireless Home Network

Posted on 01. Jul, 2008 by Kyle Judkins in How To

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or you can subscribe by email. You can also connect with me on Twitter or FriendFeed. Thanks for visiting!

The security of your home network is of great importance.  No one wants their neighbor leeching off their home network, much less, messing with all of the things you have stored on your network.  In this how to, I’m going to show you the three things you need to do in order to secure your home network.

The three things you need  to do are turn off SSID broadcasting, allow only certain MAC addresses, and enable encryption.  All of these settings can be edited at the router settings page.  You can access this page from your browser.  Let’s learn how to get to that page first, then we’ll discuss each of the settings you need to change.

In your browser, type 192.168.1.1 in the address bar and hit Enter.  This should bring up a window that asks for a username and password.  By default, the username is admin and the password is password.  You will want to change those after you log in.

Turn Off SSID Broadcasting

Now that you are logged into your router’s settings page, we are going to start adjusting the settings to make your network more secure.  We will start with turning off the broadcasting of your SSID.  This will make sure that when people are looking for a network they will not see yours, because it is not broadcasting that it exists.

In order to turn off SSID broadcasting, go to Advanced Wireless Settings and simply uncheck the Enable SSID Broadcast button.

Enable MAC Filtering

Within the same settings area, you should be able to click on a button that says Setup Access List.  This will take you to the next window and will allow you to add the MAC addresses of all the devices you want to connect to your network.  I wrote an article on Monday on how to find your MAC address.  All you need to do is name the device and type in the MAC address.  Make sure that you Turn on Access Control after you enter the MAC addresses or this work will have been for nothing.

Enable Encryption

Next, you will want to go to Wireless Settings.  Within this, you should see some security options.  You can either choose WEP or WPA encryption for your network.  WPA encryption is the best, but I have to use WEP encryption, because I have a few things on the network that don’t support WPA.  In order to set up WEP encryption, enter a Passphrase to generate the security key.  This security key will be the password for all of your wireless devices to get access through the router.

Getting Access

Now that you have made your network as secure as Fort Knox, we must go through a few steps to log on.  Whatever software you use to connect to your WiFi network, you are going to have to set up a new profile for your network.  You must know the name of your network and the security key.  All you need to do is find the area where you can add a custom network or new network.  Just follow the steps and you are on your way to your much more secure network.

Last 5 posts by Kyle Judkins

• LostInTechnology Welcomes Alex Braz
• Peek Pronto Giveaway!
• Peek Pronto Review
• LostInTechnology Welcomes Brian Ross
• Weekly Links: June 26, 2009

Related Posts

• Make Secure Passwords with The Password Meter
• How to Share a Folder Over a Network
• How to Map a Network Drive or Folder
• Printer Sharing At Home
• Guide to Opening Ports for uTorrent and Azureus

Tags: encryption, home, How To, network, router, secure, wireless