Wireless Router & Security: A Step-By-Step GuidePage: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 or Go To our Certification Articles Section
Setting up a wireless router is easy. Essentially you turn
your cable or DSL modem off and your wireless router on. Then,
you connect the router to the modem with a cable, and turn
the modem back on. You are more or less done. The wireless
network wizard on your computer will pick up the router and,
if your ISP does not have any special requirements, away-you-go,
you are on the Internet.
For ease of setup and configuration, manufacturers ship wireless
routers with all security disabled. Therein lies the problem.
If you do not take any further steps to secure your router,
and a surprising number of people don’t, your network
will be wide open to all passersby and strangers. It’s
like you’ve hung out a sign, “The door is open.
Please come in and help yourself.”
The problem is not that strangers will be able to use your
router to access the Internet but that, without further protection,
would-be intruders will be able monitor and sniff out information
you send and receive on your network. Malicious intruders
can even hop on to your internal network; access your hard
drives; and, steal, edit, or delete files on your computer.
The good news is that it is relatively easy to secure your
wireless router. Here are three basic steps you should take.
1. Password protect the access to your router’s internal
configuration
To access your router’s internal setup, open a browser
and enter the routers setup URL. The URL will be specified
in the manual. The URLs for D-Link and Linksys routers, two
major manufacturers of wireless routers, are http://192.168.0.1
and http://192.168.1.1, respectively.
For Linksys routers, leave the user name blank and type “admin”
(without the quotes) in the password field and press enter.
To change the password, simply click on the Password tab and
enter your new password.
For other routers, please consult your manual. Alternately,
you can search on the Internet with the term “default
login for ”. Don’t be surprised to find quite a
number of pages listing default login parameters for many
different routers, even uncommon ones.
2. Change the default SSID (Service Set IDentifier)
The SSID is the name of a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network).
All wireless devices on a WLAN use SSIDs to communicate with
each other.
Routers ship with standard default SSIDs. For example, the
default SSID for Linksys routers is, not unsurprisingly, “Linksys”.
As you can see, if you don’t change the default SSID
of your router a would-be intruder armed with a few common
SSIDs from major manufacturers will be able to find your wireless
network quite easily.
To change the SSID, click on the Wireless tab. Look for an
input item labeled SSID. It will be near the top. Enter a
new name for network. Don’t use something like “My
Network”. Use a name that is be hard to guess.
3. Disable SSID broadcast
Wireless enabled computers use network discovery software
to automatically search for nearby SSIDs. Some of the more
advanced software will query the SSIDs of nearby networks
and even display their names. Therefore, changing the network
name only helps partially to secure your network. To prevent
your network name from being discovered, you must disable
SSID broadcast.
In the same screen that you changed the name of your network,
you will see options for SSID broadcast. Choose “Disable
SSID” to make your network invisible. Now save all your
settings and log out.
Since your wireless network is now invisible, you will have
to configure your computers to connect to your wireless network
using the new name. On Windows XP, start by clicking on the
wireless icon in the Notification Area and proceed from there.
With these three steps, your network now has basic security.
However, if you keep sensitive information on your computers,
you may want to secure your wireless network even further.
For example, you can
- Change the channel your router uses to transmit and receive
data on a regularly basis.
- Restrict devices that can connect to the router by filtering
out MAC (Media Access Control) addresses.
- Use encryption such as WEP and WPA.
As with most things in life, security is a trade off between
cost (time, money, inconvenience) and benefit (ease of use).
It is a personal decision you make. However for the majority
of home uses, the three basic steps plus WEP/WPA encryption
provides reasonably strong security.
Turning on encryption is a two-step process. First you configure
your router to use encryption using an encryption key of your
choice. And then, you configure your computer to use the encryption
key. The actual process of configuring your router for encryption
varies from router to router. Please consult the router’s
manual.
There are even stronger methods for ensuring security. A
strong and robust security method is RADIUS (Remote Authentication
Dial In User Service). Using RADIUS requires additional hardware
and software. However, there are companies that offer RADIUS
security as a subscription based service. The fees are reasonable
and dropping.
Therefore for example, if you run a business on your wireless
network, have sensitive data on your computers such as credit
card information, and have a number of users who access your
network, you should consider using RADIUS. Since the service
sector for RADIUS is dynamic and growing, a search on the
Internet with terms like “RADIUS subscription” or
“RADIUS service” is probably the best way to locate
one.
About the Author:
Brian Medini in association with computer-internet.marc8.com
More on wireless networks computer-internet.marc8.com/top/wireless
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