How To Protect Your Wireless Network

People more likely to have wireless devices rather than wired devices. Because of that more wireless devices coming out to the market everyday. Setting up a wireless device or wireless network will be more easier than setting up a regular wired network. Most people know how to setup a simple wireless network. But they don't know how to protect it from unauthorized users. Because of this your internet connection and your shared data on computer might be a easy target for others.


Let's see how you can setup basic security on your wireless network.

• In order to do this you need to log in to your wireless router. Most of the time we are using the web interface to interact with the router. So, you need to open your web browser (Internet explorer, Firefix, Chrome, Safari......etc.) and type the IP address for your router. (Your router IP address can be different than the example)

How to find the IP address for your router

Click the right mouse button when your mouse pointer is pointing wireless network icon on the system tray. Then Select status from the menu.



Or else you can launch the start menu and then select your wireless network.



Go to support tab and the numbers which is in front of Default gateway is your Routers IP address.



Type that in to your web browsers address bar.

• Enter the necessary login information on the login page. If you don't know what those are please refer to your routers manual. If you don't have the manual you can always download it from internet. (remember that your router login screen might be a different one and it depends on the router model)

• Once you are logged in to the router look for a place called Wireless settings or Wireless security. (These options can be changed according to your router model)

• You can change the wireless security mode to WEP, WPA or WPA2 from the settings. WEP is the basic security mode and WPA, WPA2 are more enhanced security modes. With WPA and WPA2 security, old legacy wireless devices are not supported. So to be on the safe side you can implement WEP security and it will allow all wireless devices to work.

• If you are setting up a 64Bit WEP key, you have to use 10 digit password. It can be letters or numbers. Remember that when you have setup security on your wireless router, all current connections to the router is going to be disconnected and you may want to connect to the router once again using the security password that you have assigned. It can be a WEP key or WPA, WPA2 pass phrase.