One of the most convenient developments in broadband technology is wireless connectivity, also called WiFi. With the advent of this technology, concerns have been raised by many regarding the security of such a system. Since wireless routers broadcast a connection signal that can reach beyond the walls of your home, other computers that are within the signal of your router can establish an Internet connection through your broadband connection. This is akin to “stealing” a broadband connection that you are paying for. This can be overcome in a very simple way by encrypting the signal with a password, which will require any user connecting to your signal to enter the password to be able to use the broadband connection.
There are varying types of encryption available and each one offers a different level of security. The oldest type of encryption called WEP has been in existence since 1999 and it is well founded that hackers can usually break into this within about 10 minutes. A step up from WEP is WPA2 encryption. The main advantage to using WPA2 is that it changes its encryption key every time data is transmitted making it very difficult to crack. WEP does not change its encryption this way.
Another safety measure you can take is to limit the number of devices that can connect to your WAP or Wireless Access Point with something called a MAC address filter. Every machine that connects to the router has a MAC address and routers have the ability to list these addresses for you. The router you currently use may already have this built in and you may be able to see a list of all the machines that can connect to the router via their MAC addresses.
Yet, another technique for securing your network is to set your own Service Set Identifier or SSID to “hidden”. This will actually hide the name of your network but does not completely hide the network itself. Accordingly, this practice should not be considered as a high security measure.
WiFi setups should be set up with some consideration of other issues that can afflict them such as interference from physical objects or other electronic devices that may emit an interfering signal. Try to position the router in central location in your home so the signal can be broadcast evenly throughout. Be aware that 2.4 GHz devices can cause interference, as can microwaves.
