With the development of Wireless networking people began using Internet on all their mobile devices more and more.

However, although it is great to use internet without the need to use wires and cables, a problem with wireless networks is that other people can connect to your network and use your bandwidth.

The Right Way to Secure Your Network

Making your wireless network more secure is not that difficult. This will stop others steal your bandwidth and at the same time hackers won’t have the chance to access your files or take control over your network or PC. Let’s see what you can do to make your network more secure.

1. Login to the Router

The first thing you have to learn is how to login to the Router admin page. In most cases it will be enough to type 192.168.1.1 in the browser’s URL bar, and type the default login details. These can be found in the user’s manual or you can simply search the internet for the default username and password you’re your router model.

2. Change the Default RouterPassword

After you have found the router default IP and username and password, and logged into your router it is recommended to change the router default password. This will greatly improve the security of your network so don’t forget to do this.

3. Change the Network Name or SSID

The Network Name also known as SSID is also predefined in the factory. Therefore it has to be changed. Maybe it won’t boost your wireless security, but you will know to which network you can connect. Just go to the basic Wi-Fi settings after you login to the router and change the SSID from there.

4. Hide your Network Name or SSID

Another security measure you can take is to hide your SSID and make it invisible for others. However, this will not drastically improve the overall security of your network and you may have problems connecting new devices to your network.

5. Select the Right Wireless Network Encryption

If you want to prevent others from connecting to your network you have to protect it with a password.

It is recommended to select WPA2 encryption and add a strong password consisted of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. You can easily do this once you log into the router settings. Just go to Wireless Settings or Wireless Security and make the necessary changes.

6. MAC Address Filtering

All your devices which can connect to your wireless network have a MAC address. So, to boost your network protection you can use MAC address filtering which means you can add the MAC addresses of your devices so only those devices can connect to the wireless network.

If you want to enable MAC address filtering, you have to write down all the MAC addresses of your devices. After that add these MAC addresses in the router administrative settings.

7. Limit the Wireless Signal Range

Limiting the wireless signal range is very important because if you have a small apartment, the signal will spread outside of your home which means other can connect to your wireless network or if it’s protected they can use some tools to crack your wireless password. Therefore it is recommended to wither change the wireless channel or change the router mode.

It is also wise to place your router somewhere where the signal strength will be affected.

8. Upgrade the Firmware

It is recommended to check the manufacturer’s official website and see whether it has released a firmware update for your router. The current firmware version can be checked when you log into the router settings. Updating the firmware to the latest version will fix some minor bugs in the current router system and hopefully provide some new features for you to use.

Most modern routers today have an option to automatically check for a new firmware version and automatically upgrade it, so let’s hope you are having such router.

9. And Finally Connect to Your Network

If we take all these steps into consideration we can say that if you combine WPA2 encryption with MAC address filtering you can be sure that no one will have a chance to access your wireless network without your permission.

And one more thing – after you finish making all these changes you also have to reconfigure all the devices which were previously connected to the network by selecting the new network name and updating the wireless password. Now your wireless network is more secure and you can be sure that all your hard work will not be wasted. It would be really bad to ignore all these steps and ruin all the hard work and time by ignoring some of these steps.

If someone has messed up your router configuration you will have to reset the router to factory settings which means all the modifications will be lost and you will have to go through all these steps again.

Author Bio

Hello, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jane Jordan and I love writing tech related how-to guides and tutorials. If you have a computer problem, I am the right person to write about it and offer a solution. If you want to read more about the IP address 192.168.1.1 visit my blog at 192168ll.net