How do I secure my wireless network?

[BooBooGlass]

Because someone with a computer named BECKY is currently using my wifi i knwo I should know this stuff but I spent a week tryign to fix my bloody router and one of the things I must have switched off is my security. Help anyone??

Exactly how to do it will depend on router and it will usually involve hitting the router config web page (often, but not always, 192.168.1.1).

However you can follow these steps in general.

1. Set an Administrators password for your routers config web site.

2. Implement wireless security, preferably WPA but WEP is better than nothing. You might need to play around a bit to find a method that all the devices on your network are happy with.

3. Lock down the router to only accept connections from particular addresses (known as a MAC address).

1 & 2 are pretty much essential.

3 is a nice thing to get done as an extra.

There may be an alphabet soup of options for wireless security, but the best option for home will be called something like "WPA2 Personal" or "WPA2 PSK". Everyone using the network has a password, and needs it in order to access the wireless.

Depending on whether you want to keep the girl next door out or you're worried about GCHQ reading your private files there are varying degrees of enthusiasm with which you might like to generate the password. Avoiding words from the dictionary would be good, as would putting in sOmE miXed case or punctuation or something.

We've entered all our pc/ lappy/ games console mac address on the router web site so even with the password for the network an unknown device can't use it.

"We've entered all our pc/ lappy/ games console mac address on the router web site so even with the password for the network an unknown device can't use it."

Not quite. It's trivial for an intruder to set their mac address to one of the ones used on the network. It's the equivalent of "please keep out", and it's no substitute for a strong password.

Didn't know that thanks tokyonambu!

Dh told me this when he first set it up. Shows I should never believe a word he says!

As an addition, lock down the router so it can only be administered by a computer connected via the Ethernet port and not via Wireless.

You could always set the password to a random string (just make sure you note it down).