10.10. Protect Your Home Wireless Network: All Versions Public wireless hot spots aren't the only ones that present a theoretical security risk; your wireless network at home harbors hacker potential, too. It's possible, though rare, for so-called war drivers (people who drive around with laptops, looking for unprotected home WiFi networks) to piggyback onto home networks to download child pornography or send out spam. This one's easy to nip in the bud: -
Turn on wireless encryption . When you first set up your WiFi router (also called a base station or access point), you're offered the chance to create a password for your network. Take the chance. (Modern wireless routers offer two different types of password-protected encryption, called WEP and WPA. If it's available, choose the more modern, more secure one, which is WPA.) You'll then need to use matching encryption on each wireless PC on your network. Go to Control Panel  Network and Internet Network and Sharing Center Manage Wireless Networks, and then right-click your network adapter. Choose Properties Security. Type in the encryption information that matches what you entered on your router.
-
Ban unwanted PCs . Many routers include a feature that lets you limit network access to specific wireless computers. Any PC that's not on the list won't be allowed in. The feature is called MAC address filtering, although it has nothing to do with Macintosh computers. (A MAC address is a serial number that uniquely identifies a piece of networking hardware.) Not all routers can do this, and how you do it varies from router to router, so check the documentation. In a Linksys SRX 400, for example, you log into the router's administrator's screen using your Web browser, and then select Wireless Wireless Network Access. On the screen full of empty boxes, type the MAC address of the PC that you want to be allowed to get onto the network.
+R to open the Run dialog box, type ipconfig /all , and press Enter. In the resulting info screen, look for the Physical Address entry. That's the MAC address.
Type all the MAC addresses into the boxes on the Linksys router, click Save Settings, and you're all done. -
Place your router properly . Placing your WiFi router centrally in the house minimizes the "leaking" of the signal into the surrounding neighborhood.  |
