Setting up a home network.

TC

TC

Resident Agitator
I've done it before, but it was a bit buggy, wanted some advice. Here's my situation.

Just moved into a new house, I have the cable internet people coming in on tuesday to hook up the internet. It will be going through my desktop, and then back out to a wireless router. 3 other computers will be hooked up wirelessly. Three of the computers will have printers.

My biggest concern is, that when I did the wireless connection last time, I was not able to secure it, and people would just log on to our network, and that reduces the bandwidth considerably. Is there a program to password protect the network? Should I be able to do that through windows?
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

The router should have a password feature on it... My Linksys does. I can't imagine any wireless router being sold without one. That would be silly.

(I'm not going through a computer first...and I don't have cable...so it's DSL into the router, and then to the four computers. Cable should be the same, even going through a computer first, though.)

Dan
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

Of course you can secure your wireless base station, but it isn't completely secure; a determined hacker can still get in, but at least you can make it difficult for casual 'war drivers' to steal your bandwidth.

You have to enable WEP encryption (typically 64- or 128-bit, higher is better) and you can usually also do things like make your wireless station only accept MAC addresses that are YOUR wireless nodes.
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

Just curious, why are you going into your computer first and then to the router?

Also, as others have said, enabling WEP encryption and setting up a password would be the least you should do. All this can be set up via the configuration options (usually available via a web interface) of any decent router.
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

Also, make sure you have the option "Allow Broadcast of Name (SSID) " turned off and choose a network name that is different from the default--ie something like TCNet. And like Speedbump suggests--set up your Wireless card Access List, so it only accepts the mac addresses of your computers and enable encryption.
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

I think I bought a crappy router guys. It's from a compant called D-Link. Last time I set it up, I remember it saying I could turn on the encryption, but then it had a dailog box, as if to imply that I needed to enter the algorythm myself, which scared me, so I did not. It didn't ask to set up a pass word.

I also made a mistake, the cable will go through the cable modem, to the router, to the computer.

So maybe my solution is get a better router?

Also, how do I go about finding a computers mac address?
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

At a command prompt, type ipconfig /all

The MAC address will be listed as "physical address"

While I've never had any problems with D-Link things (NICs, mostly), it's always nice to run out and buy the latest & greatest. :)

Although even the D-Link should have encryption/password protection.

Dan
 
Re: Setting up a home network.

Check the manual that your router came with. Or if you lost that or never got one, check out the support section on the d-link website.

This should tell you the default IP address of your router. Plug that IP into your browser and you should be able to set everything up in a GUI, this includes your wireless security...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top