electrons's Blog

I can’t tell you how many people buy off the shelf wireless routers for home, and never change the store-loaded settings to make it a secure network.

A wireless router gives you the capability to have wireless internet and file sharing anywhere in your house. However if not set up correctly, you are compromising your own security, especially if you live in a city. I’ll explain the 3 things you should do in order to protect your home wireless network from intrusion and to keep it safe and reliable.

1) Change the default password! Everyone knows your password is “admin” if you never changed it from the store. Anyone can enter your network and have free roaming to do whatever they wish. Change your password and make it a strong one (one that uses numbers, letters and a case sensitive letter or symbol)

2) Turn off ID broadcasting.  Log into your router (for most home users go to http://192.168.1.1) and change the “SSID Broadcast” mode to “OFF”. This feature is cool. What this does is hide your network if someone searches for a network to connect to. Even though it exists, it will not show up in a wireless search because your router is not “broadcasting” its name out to everyone. Cool huh? You’ll have to manually enter your network name the first time you connect after changing this setting. By the way, rename your wireless network name to something unique. Say you name it “MY_WIRELESS”, a network search will not show your network….but when you manually enter MY_WIRELESS as a network name, it’ll connect right up. I told you this was cool stuff….

3) Enable security.  Finally, lets add the nail in the coffin. Turn on your wireless router’s WEP or WPA security feature. You will make a passphrase and using it will generate a “key” code to enter your network. Consult the manual for this since all models are different on the way to set that up. So now, your passwords are changed from the factory loaded defaults, your network name is not broadcasted to the public and even if someone still manages to get in, they’ll need a key using your passphrase. This is about as secure as you can get with these routers. These tips will keep your home computers private, and your identity safer. Be safe.