Securing a Wireless Network

Securing a SoHo (Small office Home office) Wireless Network.Wireless networking has exploded in the last few years, with broadband now a common household item, the whole family wants access to this service and share its high bandwidth equally.To create a broadband sharing network is easy, the exact items needed are covered in another guide written by us, but to secure this network is not only important but worringly also often overlooked too.We will in a simplified way try to explain the basics if securing your network from the casual hacker, bear in mind theres a good chance when you setup your network, your computer could probably see 2 or three networks in an average built up area, if your network is not secured, these people can also see and use yours.To secure without being connected to the router via a lan cable always start in small steps working back from the router.Firstly: connect to the router via any web browser and change the SSID from the default name to one you like, then when a scan is done of your network the SSID will not give away the make of your router so the scanner would not then know the default settings of the device.Save the router settings with the new name and then go and change all the wireless adapters to pick up the new name.Secondly: Go back into the router and add WEP encryption, if you use a large range of devices stick to 128bit wep with HEX key as older devices and PDA'S etc do not usually go higher, if all your devices are modern and support higher encryption then please use it.Again when you save this setting you will lose connection to your router, so again go back to all your wireless adapters and then enter the same WEP key.When you are reconnected to your router go back to the SSID setting page and mask or hide the SSID name, now when people scan for available networks in their area you network name will not show at all.If you really want to isolate your sysem from the determined casual hacker go to the DCHP server settings and only allow the same IP address range as devices you want to be able to connect, e.g. if you only have five computers connected keep the DCHP server to only serve address in the range 192.168.100.1 to 192.168.100.6 (your IP numbers may be different, but they all follow the four sets of three numbers, all networks need the first three sets of three to be the same and the nexts et of number 0-255 are the amount of computers than can connect)Again to really secure your system change the range of IP numbers your DCHP servers to a completely different set i.e. 120.111.193.001 to 120.111.193.006 in the same example as above.The last thing to consider is only allowing Mac address to connect that are on your approved list, each wireless devices has a unique MAC address, you are able to set your router to only allow devices that numbers match the number you setup on this router.If you switch on all the computers/wireless devices you have, then go to your routers DCH client list (make sure there are no more sets on numbers than computers you have connected) and enter them onto the Mac filtering number list.