How do I secure my WiFi internet connection?

My home pc has an NTL cable internet connection. I bought the NTL
recommended Actiontec wirelesss router and plugged it into my cable
modem.
And hey! I can now connect my WiFi laptop to the internet 100 yards
down the street.

But, I guess anyone else can do so as well.

How do I secure/protect my internet access?

I set up the wireless router using the standard set up routine that
they supplied, but there was no mention of how I protect access to my
cable connection.

I am reasonably pc literate but a beginner when it comes to this
stuff.

Advice please, or point me in the direction of a some
straightforwardhelp pages

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> My home pc has an NTL cable internet connection. I bought the NTL
> recommended Actiontec wirelesss router and plugged it into my cable
> modem.
> And hey! I can now connect my WiFi laptop to the internet 100 yards
> down the street.
>
> But, I guess anyone else can do so as well.
>
> How do I secure/protect my internet access?
>
> I set up the wireless router using the standard set up routine that
> they supplied, but there was no mention of how I protect access to my
> cable connection.
>
> I am reasonably pc literate but a beginner when it comes to this
> stuff.
>
> Advice please, or point me in the direction of a some
> straightforwardhelp pages
>
Enabled WEP encryption. Read the manual for your router and PCMCIA
wireless NIC.

--
Nuckfut

Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him.

Enable WEP on WAP and Wi-Fi cards - change keys weekly (?)

Use MAC address filtering to only allow connect by your Wi-Fi cards

Use fixed IP addresses

Change default IPs and passwords of your WAP, router etc.

Disable SSID broadcast

Control signal strength and dispersion - a few passive reflectors will help
keep RF where you want it and avoid giving your neighbours too good a
connection.


How secure is secure? What are you doing - genetic research, currency
trading?? If it's that sensitive don't broadcast it with wi-fi....

If you want it to be more secure use a VPN setup - even better use a bit of
cable ;-)


Guy

keefyp wrote:
> My home pc has an NTL cable internet connection. I bought the NTL
> recommended Actiontec wirelesss router and plugged it into my cable
> modem.
> And hey! I can now connect my WiFi laptop to the internet 100 yards
> down the street.
>
> But, I guess anyone else can do so as well.
>
> How do I secure/protect my internet access?
>
> I set up the wireless router using the standard set up routine that
> they supplied, but there was no mention of how I protect access to my
> cable connection.
>
> I am reasonably pc literate but a beginner when it comes to this
> stuff.
>
> Advice please, or point me in the direction of a some
> straightforwardhelp pages

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:19:27 +0100, "Bigguy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Enable WEP on WAP and Wi-Fi cards - change keys weekly (?)
>
Changing the keys weekly is pretty much a waste of time. WEP is broken
and a hacker can recover the keys from a few hours traffic.
....
>
>How secure is secure? What are you doing - genetic research, currency
>trading?? If it's that sensitive don't broadcast it with wi-fi....
>
>If you want it to be more secure use a VPN setup - even better use a bit of
>cable ;-)
>
This is the right approach, but if you go for VPN with sensitive data
ensure your VPN provider has a secure mechanism.
http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/IEEE/ has the details.

This is all a bit academic for the OP. If all you want to do is keep
your neighbors out of your NTL connection.

Set a password on the AP.
Set the AP to exclude all MAC addresses except those you want.
--
Peter Sumner

All good advice from the responses but it's gone way over my head!

On Advanced Set up for the router, there are sections for:
WAN IP Address
Wireless Settings
LAN IP Address
DHCP Server
Services Blocking
Website Blocking
VPN Pass Through
Remote Management
Port Forwarding
DMZ Hosting
MAC Address Cloning

In Wireless settings, I can change the ESSID (whatever that is!) and
the Channel, and turn WEP to 64 0r 128 bit.

What on earth does "change keys" mean?

and "Use MAC address filtering "

and "USe fixed IP addresses"

and so on.

I would RTFM, but it's crap and doesn't explain all this stuff!

Keith