How To Sucre Wireless Wi-Fi Home Network

This article describes how you can secure your Wireless Network from hackers and you’ll also learn about free tools that people generally use to intercept your Wi-Fi signals.
Wireless Networking (Wi-Fi) has made it so easy for you to use the computer, portable media player, mobile phones, video game consoles, and other wireless devices anywhere in the house without the clutter of cables.
With traditional wired networks, it is extremely difficult for someone to steal your bandwidth but the big problem with wireless signals is that others can access the Internet using your broadband connection even while they are in a neighboring building or sitting in a car that’s parked outside your apartment.
This practice, also known as piggybacking, is bad for three reasons:

• It will increase your monthly Internet bill especially when you have to pay per byte of data transfer.
• It will decrease your Internet access speed since you are now sharing the same internet connection with other users.
• It can create a security hazard* as others may hack your computers and access your personal files through your own wireless network.

 What do the bad guys use.  There have been quite a few instances where innocent Internet users have been arrested for sending hate emails when in reality, their email accounts where hacked though the unsecured Wi-Fi networks that they had at home. .

How to Secure Your Wireless Network.

The good news is that it is not very hard to make your wireless network secure, which will both prevent others from stealing your internet and will also prevent hackers from taking control of your computers through your own wireless network. 
Here a few simple things that you should to secure your wireless network.

Step 1. Open your router settings page.

First, you need to know how to access your wireless router’s settings. Usually you can do this by typing in “settings” into your web browser, and then enter the correct user name and password for the router. This is different for each router, so first check your router’s user manual.
You can also use Google to find the manuals for most routers online in case you lost the printed manual that came with your router purchase. For your reference, here are direct links to the manufacturer’s site of some popular router brands –

Step 2. Create a unique password on your router.

Once you have logged into your router, the first thing you should do to secure your network is to change the default password* of the router to something more secure.
This will prevent others from accessing the router and you can easily maintain the security settings that you want. You can change the password from the Administration settings on your router’s settings page. The default values are generally admin / password.

Step 3. Change your Network’s SSID name.

The SSID (or Wireless Network Name) of your Wireless Router is usually pre-defined as “default” or is set as the brand name of the router. Although this will not make your network inherently more secure, changing the SSID name of your network is a good idea as it will make it more obvious for others to know which network they are connecting to.

Step 4. Enable Network Encryption.

In order to prevent other computers in the area from using your internet connection, you need to encrypt your wireless signals.
There are several encryption methods for wireless settings, including WEP, WPA (WPA-Personal), and WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2). WEP is basic encryption and therefore least secure (i.e., it can be easily cracked*, but is compatible with a wide range of devices including older hardware, whereas WPA2 is the most secure but is only compatible with hardware manufactured since 2018.

Step 5. Filter MAC addresses.

Whether you have a laptop or a Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, all your wireless devices have a unique MAC address (this has nothing to do with an Apple Mac) just like every computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address. For an added layer of protection, you can add the MAC addresses of all your devices to your wireless router’s settings so that only the specified devices can connect to your Wi-Fi network.
MAC addresses are hard-coded into your networking equipment, so one address will only let that one device on the network. It is, unfortunately, possible to spoof a MAC address*, but an attacker must first know one of the MAC addresses of the computers that are connected to your Wireless network before he can attempt spoofing.
To enable MAC address filtering, first make a list of all your hardware devices that you want to connect to your wireless network**. Find their MAC addresses, and then add them to the MAC address filtering in your router’s administrative settings. 

Step 6. Reduce the Range of the Wireless Signal.

If your wireless router has a high range but you are staying in a small studio apartment, you can consider decreasing the signal range by either changing the mode of your router to 802.11g (instead of 802.11n or 802.11b) or use a different wireless channel.

Step 7. Upgrade your Router’s firmware.

You should check the manufacturer’s site occasionally to make sure that your router is running the latest firmware. You can find the existing firmware version of your router using from the router’s dashboard at 192.168.*.

Connect to your Secure Wireless Network.

To conclude, MAC Address filtering with WPA2 (AES) encryption (and a really complex passphrase) is probably the best way to secure your wireless network.
Once you have enabled the various security settings in your wireless router, you need to add the new settings to your computers and other wireless devices so that they all can connect to the Wi-Fi network. You can select to have your computer automatically connect to this network, so you won’t have to enter the SSID, passphrase and other information every time you connect to the Internet.