Wireless security for a belkin router

pennies2pounds_3

I took the plunge and bought the dell 1300 and also bought the Belkin F5D7230 Wireless Router DSL/Cable (802.11g) router from dell at the same time. I have a bluyonder 2 meg connection too. I need to set up the security for it now but not too sure about the security set up - can anyone give me some help please. TIA

ftbworried

Hi

first of all you will need to go into the router configuration page (see your manual for how to do that), most likely to be typing http://192.168.2.1 into your browser - I think with Belkin the default passwords are blank

You'll need to do this from a wired device into the back of your unit as you'll lose connectivity when you enforce the security....

on the configuration pages, there'll be a page specifically dedicated to "security" under the wireless setting - just go here.....

you have two main options, WEP and WPA - WPA is the "latest and greatest" and is considered more secure than WEP which has various vulnerabilities.... the choice that you make depends really on the "threat" you think your at - i.e. are there lots of boffin kids in the street that might try to hack you, or do you live in quiet surburbia where people have never heard of the internet ;-)

depending on the wireless capability of your PCs/Laptops might also impact this decision, for example, I originally purcased some cheap PCMCIA cards when I first set up, fabulously reliable, but dont handle 128bit WEP or WPA codes particularly well

not that really concerns me, I have WEP set up, mac filtering and I've also disabled SSID broadcast so you need to know my network exists to connect to it!

hope that gives you some pointers to get started -make your changes on your router from the admin pages- save the configuration and reboot the device - then use your PC/Laptop wireless software and configure it with the details you set (SSID, Channel, Security Mode etc)

Mr_Squiddy

ftbworried wrote:

not that really concerns me, I have WEP set up, mac filtering and I've also disabled SSID broadcast so you need to know my network exists to connect to it!

That does not stop someone in your vicinity from capturing your packets over a period of time and then using a brute-force crack to decode those packets. In this respect you should use WPA rather than WEP. Although neither are totally secure, WPA is a lot better than WEP.

I suppose it depends whether you are concerned about someone snooping on your internet browsing. I have both wireless and wired networking in my house and I never use the former for anything which I want to remain secure, e.g. online banking.

HTH,
Pete

Lorian

WPA-PSK (Pre seeded key) is what you want.

albertross_2

Try getting a good random 63 character wpa-psk from here:

https://www.grc.com/passwords

it is important to use a long random key, not a short word.

albertross_2

This is how to do it on a Netgear router, the gist is the same as Belkin, but the specifics will be different (e.g. the address is 192.168.2.1 etc..)

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1460703&postcount=2

pennies2pounds_3

Just a quick reply to all of you that helped me set up security on my wireless connection. After a few 'teething problems' mostly operator error I now have a nice secure network , thanks again .
Pennies. :T