Introduction
Chapter 1 - To Secure or Not
Chapter 2 - Lock Your Settings
Chapter 3 - WEP or WPA?
Chapter 4 - SSID Broadcasting
Chapter 5 - MAC Address Lockdown
Chapter 6 - Conclusion

In the old days, if you wanted computers in various rooms of your home or office to be on a network, you had to run Ethernet cables through your walls and into each room. If you wanted to move a computer from one location to another, you had to go into the walls again and install another drop. While this is the route that most large businesses still take, you have another option. If you don’t want the trouble of running cables, you can opt to use wireless networking. It is often called “Wi-Fi.” This stands for Wireless Fidelity, and I think most people agree that it is a terrible name because it makes no sense.

Wireless networking works much like your cordless phone. Instead of the phone base station you have a wireless router, also called a wireless access point (WAP). Your computers act like the phone handsets. Data is passed back and forth between the two just as though there was a cable connecting them. Some computers come with wireless capability pre-installed. You can give your computers wireless capability by installing a wireless card or using a USB wireless adaptor.

There are several wireless protocols available. IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g are the most common. A new one that is slowly coming into more widespread use is called Pre-N. All wireless access points (WAPs) have some level of security built into them and there are universal tricks that will work on any router.

802.11g routers are backwards compatible with 802.11b devices, but your network will slow down as a result. Pre-N routers are backwards compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g devices and your network may or may not slow down depending upon which brand you use.

Whether or not to secure their wireless network is a tough decision for many people. I don’t want to get into a long moral and ethical diatribe about Internet access sharing, but any discussion of wireless networking has to touch on it. When you set up a wireless router, you have to decide whether you want to open it up to the public or keep it for yourself. There are arguments for both sides of the issue.

Many people feel that it is good to leave your router open for anyone who is passing by to connect to. This means that your neighbors will all be able to use your Internet access for free. Unless your neighbor is downloading massive quantities of full-length movies or something, you really will not notice any drain on your bandwidth. It is a good way to be neighborly and when you are traveling to a friend's house and looking for a wireless signal to get online, you will be really glad when you find someone who leaves their connection open.

The other side of this argument is that it leaves you open to more than just sharing your connection. You are letting people connect to your network. If they wanted to, they could gain access to your computers or even watch your network traffic and capture your passwords, etc. While this might not be a huge concern to every home user, if you own a business this could be a dangerous proposition.

Many people also feel that if you have to pay for your connection, why shouldn't your neighbors and passer-bys also have to pay? We could argue this point for days on end, and invoke everything from federal laws to ancient Eastern philosophies to find an answer, so I will let you make your own decision. This guide is intended for those who have decided to keep their neighbors and intruders off their network/Internet connection.

For the lawyers in the audience, I will also add that you should check with your cable or DSL provider and find out if sharing your connection is a violation of their Terms of Service that you agreed to when you signed up for service.

When you set up your router, it has a name (also known as the SSID) and password that were programmed into it by the manufacturer. You need to change these. If someone sees a router named “Linksys” they are most going to assume that if you were too lazy to change the router name, you were probably also too lazy to change the password.

You can name the router anything you like. You may want to give it a descriptive name if you want people to be able to find it among other wireless signals. This is why a hotel might name their guest router "Hilton Garden Inn." If you do not want your neighbors knowing whom the router belongs too, then you can give it a more cryptic name. You can also choose to hide its name, but we will talk about that in a later chapter.

Changing the password is very important. The first password I try when I see a locked router that I like to try is "admin" because that is the default password on many routers. Pick another password that no one is likely to guess. Leaving the default password in place is just inviting someone to break into your router. Whether you want to share your Internet access or not, this password should be known to only you.

Why does this matter? Well, no matter how well you configure your router to be secure, if someone can gain access to your router's settings they can change those settings and unlock it so they (and the world) can use your router. They could even lock you out of it if they wanted to be mean!

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