What is an easy (for the casual user) way to secure a home wirelesss network?

Answer 1

Make sure you set the Data encryption and network key for your router. It an encrypt all your wireless data and make sure no one can use your wireless access unless they know your network key. Although no security is 100% secure, but at least it is a good enough protection for home wireless network.

Answer 2

configure a password on the wireless network, using WPA encryption if your router and devices support it, WEP if not. (the devices will say if they both support WPA or not in the documentation)

in general, even a bad password is good enough to be a deterrent to the casual attacker.

a more determined attacker will be able to defeat a password for WEP security due to weaknesses in the protocol, and the same can be said for MAC address filters, which would keep a casual attacker out, but not a determined one. the password is better than the MAC filter since it also provides at least basic encryption for the traffic, while MAC address filtering just makes it less obvious to an attacker why they can't connect at first.

Answer 3

besides RTFM which is quite clever,

* Turn off SSID Broadcast
* Enable WPA if you have XP, otherwise use WEP
* Enable MAC filtering

To better protect the transmission of your data, connect to a VPN server so that your packets will not be able to be decrypted in the event that a hacker gets on your network.

Breaking into a wireless home network isnt that difficult even when using the three steps provided above. At most, you will keep out your curious neighbors.

Answer 4

Despite what they tell you in the user manual, WEP is generally not very secure. The ways to beat it are thoroughly documented and available, so anybody with a little time and patience could circumvent your security, at that level.

You may feel that you aren't worth them hacking you, in which case WEP is fine.

To be more secure, read up about WPA, and its variants... and check into MAC address filtering - this allows you to set up a list of the physical addresses of each computer, and make these the only ones allowed access.

Both of those can be beaten too, but they do take a fair bit of time and effort, most drive-by's won't bother.

Answer 5

Set up WPA/WPA2 in your wireless router/AP config. Also if you would like more advanced security, you can filter MAC ID's which will keep unauthorized users off your network.

Answer 6

I have the same issue at my home for my Dad, I searched on this topic and implemented the steps that are discussed in the following link,,, hope that it will work for you as well...

http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/wireless/a/aa112203_2.htm

Regards
Nirmal
Microsoft technical Support

Answer 7

Make sure you're using WEP to secure it. Also, I would turn off SSID Broadcast.

Answer 8

if your wireless router have a firewall and then put a person password to protect it.

Answer 9

make sure your wireless router has a firewall

Answer 10

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