Do you know that no matter how hard you try, you cannot make a wireless connection as secure as a wired one? Well, that is a tough introduction but wait! You are not hopeless. There are three steps for having a very secure wireless Internet connection. Let's begin.STEP 1.
Wireless modems have a control panel accessed via a web browser and the default URL is usually something like: http:// 192.168.0.1, http:// 192.168.1.1, etc. If somebody accesses the control panel, he/she can do many things that you do not want them to!
So what can you do? The best thing to do is to change the default password of the control panel which is by default blank or something easy to guess such as admin. Try to use a combination of numbers and letters. One example is hg87Udgrt.
STEP 2.
You secured the control panel but others can still access Internet via your modem. Now, it is time to prevent people from using your modem without knowing the password you are about to define. This setting is usually under the Wireless Security section.
Once you find the wireless security page in the control panel, you will be asked to select a mode such as WEP, WPA2 Personal, WPA2 Mixed, and so on. If you see WPA2, select it. If not, select WPA.
Then you should enter a passphrase that is hard to guess again. Do not give the same password you have chosen at step 1. Think about it: if you have a vault with two locks, you will certainly have two different keys, not one!
Set your passphrase and you are done. Congratulations! You have just one step left.
STEP 3.
No matter how hard you try, there is no 100% security. The more you secure your system, the better it will withstand attacks.
Each computer on an Ethernet network has a fixed address called physical (MAC) address. Since it is impossible to change this address for the majority of network cards, you can instruct the wireless modem to restrict address to the network cards of computers you will use to access the Internet for an added layer of security.
So, how do you know the MAC address of the wireless card of the computer you use? It is very simple! Open a command editor by typing cmd command in Start -> Run window. Then, type ipconfig /all. From the output, search for your wireless card name and you will see the MAC address after a small number of lines.
Now, you have your MAC address at hand. It is time to enter this address into the control panel of your wireless modem. This setting is usually available under a section called Wireless Access. You should enter the physical (MAC) address such as 00:13:E8:18:19:FF and then enable the MAC address filtering.
You completed all the steps! You did your best to secure your modem. Now it is time to connect. Your computer will ask you the network key before connecting to the modem which is the passphrase you chose in step 2.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask via the Questions button in the upper right part of my site.
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