How can I protect my wireless network from people using it?

Question

My family has a linksys router and I set up windows XP on all of them. 3 have professional edition, and one is a media center edition. The rest (besides one 98) are just normal home edition. One is wired to the router and the rest are wireless. My dad showed me the article on the yahoo home page yesterday about neighbors 'stealing' wifi, and we actually do get that problem sometimes. Is there a way to password-protect the wireless connection without setting up a new network? thanks in advance.

Answer 1

What kind of a router did you get? I have a router from Linksys as well. I have a WRT54GS. I did some research on Lynksys and they gave me a website on how to protect my wireless connection.

www.linksys.com/connect

Just follow the instruction and it will protect all of your wireless connections.

Answer 2

Now, you are going to login to the Linksys, and make sure your name changes from the factory default "ADMIN" to something else.

Then enter a real password, to change the default password from 'admin'

Go into the security section, and you can name the network something like FamNet and log out. try out logging in, with your name and password.

Now, I power down, count to twenty, then power up.

If it doesn't work, you can hold in the reset button and reset everything to those defaults.

Anyway, now you go to the first computer you want. and your network should be down. Not even there!

Now, open the 'Other... and a window should open, where you type FamNet and you should be on the wifi! Check it out by loading the browser!

This is a 'no password', easy way, to hide your wifi. It can be broken by a good cracker, or hacker, but, few bother, as there are lots easier pickin's out there! Go to each computer and log them in.

Answer 3

Only using WPA with extremely long and strong key will make network truly secured. Short keys, WEP encryption, MAC filtering etc will hamper attempts rather than provide security. Audio audition below has in depth simple term explanation of entire problem and solution - start from audition #10 “Open Wireless Access Points” and proceed up:

http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm

Steve Gibson (person speaking in podcast) is creator of AdAware.

Answer 4

here how to do it. open the gateway using browser (IE, mozilla, whatever you have) by typing http://192.168.1.1
then, go to the wireless section and choose wireless security.
the best security i would recommend you is the WEP. choose the first default transmit key. also, choose 64 bits 10 hex digits as the WEP encryption. now, here is the tricky part.. in Key 1, you can only type 0-9 or A-F in that text field. this is because the encryption is using hexadecimal. please note that A-F should be typed in capital letters not small letters. type whatever you want in the passphrase because that's your backup key if you forgot your 'Key 1.' don't forget to write down your 'Key 1' and your 'Passphrase' because you will need it to connect. you need to type your 'Key 1' when it asks you for password. good luck

Answer 5

Your router documentation and software should have instructions on how to set up encryption on the router and your PCs. See: http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1114037291212&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

Answer 6

You would have had to enter some sort of password. If you have installed wireless correctly, no-one can access it.

Answer 7

Check this out on how to secure wireless network: http://www.home-network-help.com/wireless-network-security.html

Hope this helps..

picoHat

Answer 8

Try to get informaion from below website