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Tutorials / FAQs -
PCs and Networking
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In this day and age it is adviseable to secure your home network against unwanted intruders. Wireless routers are especially vulnerable with their default settings. Enabling a little security is not very difficult, it just requires that you can find the information to do it. Here I show you how to turn WEP encryption on for you local LAN.
SSID is basically what your wireless router broadcasts as a network name. You'll want to set this to any string other than the default. Go into your firewall/router administration, and select the wireless security section. Enter anything as a passphrase, which will be used to calculate the network keys that you can use. Click Generate to calculate up to four of these keys, and apply the settings to your router.
Next you need to set up the security settings in Windows. Open up the Windows wireless properties, choose the correct network connection (SSID) name if it's listed, or create a new one that matches your SSID. Choose WEP as the encryption method. Enter the SSID you configured your browser to use, select the appropriate key index, and enter the network key generated by your firewall router. The key index is not really significant, you just have to be sure to use a matching key index/network key combination.
When you apply these settings, the wireless connection will reset itself. You should be good to go. |
