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How Many Of Your Neighbors Are Using Your Internet Connection
by Walter Babigian
Does your home have a wireless router connected to your DSL or Broadband cable connection? Well if it does, and you did not set it up securely then it is very likely your neighbors or drive by hackers are using your internet connection! Even worse these same people could be gaining access to the computers connected to your network. Wireless networking is very easy to turn on but a little more difficult to secure correctly. A simple look on the internet will show you sites that actually list unsecured wireless connections. I did a search on my home address and found 129 open networks within a 1/10 of a mile of my house!! Is yours one of them? There are some simple things you can do to secure your wireless connection. Let me show you how.
1. Lets start with the simplest thing first. Change the default password on the wireless router. Wireless routers come with a default password already set. This password is the same for every router of that brand and can easily be looked up on the internet by a hacker. So change it to a secure password immediately!
2. Next change the default SSID. The SSID is most often set to the name of the manufacturer so change it to something different. After you do this then turn off SSID broadcast. This is a weak security measure and is meant only to stop the not technical neighbor from stealing your internet. It will not stop a determined hacker.
3. Turn on MAC address filtering. In the wireless router configuration turn on MAC filtering and enter the MAC addresses of the wireless cards belonging to your PC's and laptops. This will prevent computers that are not on the allowed MAC address list from connecting to your wireless router.
4. Turn on encryption. Depending on your wireless router age and model you will have different options for encryption. You may have (WEP), (WPA and WPA2). Any of these encryption methods are better than nothing; however WPA2 is the most secure of the 3 with WEP being the least secure of the three. So choose based on what your router is capable of then the most secure if you router is capable of more than one type.
Obviously the more checks that are made, the greater the likelihood of preventing network break-ins that is why implementing all of these instead of just one will be much more secure.
About the Author
Walter Babigian is a computer consultant with more than 15 years in the computer / telecommunication industry. A Comptia A+ and Network + certified professional. He is owner of Big W Consulting a private computer consulting business and computer maintenance co. He enjoys surfing the net and playing World of Warcraft in his spare time. He is the proud parent of 2 boys. More great information can be found at authors web site.
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