Dummies, Wireless

Chapter 9: Securing Your Wireless Home Network
or make your network hard to use. All that’s required is the motivation to
spend a few minutes (after you have everything up and working) battening
down the hatches and getting ready for sea. (Can you tell that Pat used to be
in the Navy?)
The key steps in securing your wireless network, as we see them, are the following:
1. Change all the default values on your network.
2. Enable WPA.
3. Close your network to outsiders (if your access point supports this).
In Chapter 16 we talk about using a virtual private network (VPN) to secure
your wireless connection when you’re away from home and when using
public Wi-Fi hot spots. A virtual private network encrypts all the data that
you send and receive through your computer’s network connection by creating
a secure and encrypted network tunnel that runs from your computer to
an Internet gateway (which could be in your office’s network or run by a service
provider on the Internet). If you really wanted to be as secure as possible,
you could use a VPN from a service provider such as Witopia (www.
witopia.net) to encrypt your traffic at home too. The added benefit of a VPN,
beyond security, is anonymity. To folks on the Internet, you will “look” like
you’re surfing the Internet from that Internet gateway and not your home —
which makes it harder for folks to track your comings and goings on the
Internet. A VPN isn’t required to have a secure Wi-Fi network, but if you have
one and your WEP or WPA security is broken by a bad guy, your communications
will be secured by another layer of encryption.
Hundreds of different access points and network adapters are available. Each
has its own unique configuration software. (At least each vendor does; and
often different models from the same vendor have different configuration systems.)
You need to RTFM (Read the Fine Manual!). We give you some generic
advice on what to do here, but you really, really, really need to pick up the
manual and read it before you enable security on your network. Every vendor
has slightly different terminology and different ways of doing things. If you
mess up, you may temporarily lose wireless access to your access point. (You
should still be able to plug in a computer with an Ethernet cable to gain
access to the configuration system.) You may even have to reset your access
point and start over from scratch. Follow the vendor’s directions (as painful
at that may be). We tell you the main steps you need to take to secure your
network; your manual gives you the exact line-by-line directions on how to
implement these steps on your equipment.
Most access points also have some wired connections available — Ethernet
ports you can use to connect your computer to the access point. You can
almost always use this wired connection to run the access point configuration
software. When you’re setting up security, we recommend making a
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