Making a wireless router secure

albertross_2

WLAN would be my guess, you are looking for stuff about encryption, wpa, wep etc..

No it should be fine, if it works.

The theory is that 11 meg should be faster than your internet speed so it shouldn't be a problem if you have a good signal, but I have a PC on an 11 meg adapter, and speedtests on an upto 8 meg connection are about 2-3 meg, as opposed to 5-6 if I use a g adapter.

iwilldoitthistime

great - thanks!

If I pick WLAN, then WLAN settings it comes up with

SSID - Default
Country - Default
DS channel - channel 6
SSID broadcast - enable
wep - disable
WEP key - HEX
64 bit encryption - four rows of zeros
128 bit encryption - four reows of zeros
Default key 1
Authentication type - auto

from reading other posts, I guess I need to change SSID to ?
disbale the SSID broadcast and fill in one of the encryption rows of zeros as numbers I select?

Am I on the right lines (or way off as usual!)

albertross_2

I'd leave the ssid broadcasting until you are connected successfully.

choose wep 128 bit (assuming that the newer wpa isn't available)

have you found the brand/model no yet?

iwilldoitthistime

so other than that, am I on the right lines?

When Ive set a password do i then go into control panel and set my system to pick up the router with a password?

albertross_2

change the ssid from default to a random word that doesn't identify you, and it should then appear in vista as an available network.

iwilldoitthistime

thanks albertross! Your patience is really appreciated.

I will try this in the morning when I can connect to my actual internet connection without using the router (I tried to do it whilst on the router this morning and it went haywire!)

thanks again:T

viru.doshi

To be a bit more secure I'd recommend hiding the SSID, then you can name it to whatever you want, only you will know your network name, then you can manually search/connect to the router.

Additionally, if your router supports it (I imagine most wireless ones would) is to turn on MAC Address filtering, and add the MAC addresses to the approved list.

Start > Run, at the prompt type 'ipconfig /all' then look for the details for the wireless card/adapter and see the value for Physical Address. It's a unique alphanumeric number for that particular network card.

Hope that helps.

Antexter

the best idea to make it secure is dont use the default name on it link linksys .
Never use WEP encryption on it if you have is use WPA or even better WPA2.
but one of my favourite methods is setting up a SSH tunnel.

viru.doshi

Lol yes dont use the default name, also change the login password, its probably defaulted to like 1234 or something. My router's default was blank, literally, lol.

Ah good ol' SSH, good stuff mate

iwilldoitthistime

Hi

I tried putting in all the info above, but my laptop just isnt recognising it as a network - it disappears from the list (I can only see my neighbours network now!)

Could it be something to do with the vista??

thanks for the advice!