Router Safety
Written by Alan Wednesday, 20 January 2010 08:00
The most important part of a home network is the router. A network can’t function without it. It’s also where many unsuspecting users go wrong. Not that they choose the wrong router – there really aren’t any wrong choices. Some may be more or less user-friendly, but they all do essentially the same thing. No, where most users go wrong is configuration. Or, should I say, lack of it? The best thing you can do to protect your computers is to to configure your router properly.
Here I am just going to cover the basics to protect you from average threats. If you want to really geek-out and get down and dirty then I recommend looking at one of the many excellent security sites on the web.
1. When you unbox your router, you should find among the papers an address where your router will “live”. In my case this is 192.168.0.1 and yours will be very similar, if not exactly the same. So open your web browser and type this address into the address bar.
2. You will be prompted for a user name and password which are also included in the paperwork that came with the router. I’m using a Netgear and it’s no great secret that the default Netgear user name is “Admin” and the password is “Password”. And that is the first problem. Anyone within range of my wireless signal can can access my router’s administration page by simply knowing these defaults. So, guess what we change first?
3. From here on things can vary slightly based on your brand and model of router. Mine is older, and perhaps it’s changed now, but I can’t change the user name from “Admin”. But if I click Set Password in the left column I can change “password” to something just a little harder to figure out. Obviously, use the hardest thing you think you’ll remember. Mix it up with letters, numbers and symbols if possible.
4. Next, again in the left column, I click Wireless Settings. Here there are two things to take care of. The first is changing the network name (SSID) from the default of “Netgear”. The second is to set the wireless encryption. There are two choices – WEP and WPA. Ignore WEP because it’s no longer considered secure. It may keep out the nosy neighbor, but anyone serious about getting on your network will be on in 5 minutes or less. Choose a long password that makes no sense and write it down – you’ll need it later to enable your other PC’s and devices to get on the network. Don’t worry though, you don’t need to memorize it.
5. Finally, under Advanced Wireless Settings, there’s a checkbox next to Enable SSID Broadcast that is checked by default. This one isn’t a huge deal, but just to be safe I would uncheck it.
6. Make sure you have saved all of these changes before exiting and then you’re done with Router Safety 101.
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Great article, but that doesn’t always really to work together with my router ip address, any advice?