Dummies, Wireless

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Part III: Installing a Wireless Network
wired connection and doing all your access point configuration in this manner.
That way, you can avoid accidentally blocking yourself from the access point
when your settings begin to take effect.
Getting rid of the defaults
It’s incredibly common to go to a Web site like Netstumbler.com, look at the
results of someone’s Wi-Fi reconnoitering trip around their neighborhood,
and see dozens of access points with the same service set identifier (SSID, or
network name; refer to Chapter 2). And it’s usually Linksys because Linksys is
the most popular vendor out there (though NETGEAR, D-Link, and others are
also well represented). Many folks bring home an access point, plug it in, turn
it on, and then do nothing. They leave everything as it was set up from the
factory. They don’t change any default settings.
Well, if you want people to be able to find your access point, there’s nothing
better (short of a sign on the front door) than leaving your default SSID
broadcasting out there for the world to see. In some cities, you could probably
drive all the way across town with a laptop set to Linksys as an SSID
and stay connected the entire time. (We don’t mean to just pick on Linksys
here. You could probably do the same thing with an SSID set to default, the
D-Link default, or any of the top vendors’ default settings.)
When you begin your security crusade, the first thing you should do is to
change all the defaults on your access point. You should change, at minimum,
the following:
� Your default SSID
� Your default administrative password
If you don’t change the administrative password, someone who gains access
to your network can guess at your password and end up changing all the settings
in your access point without your knowing. Heck, if they want to teach
you a security lesson — the tough love approach, we guess — they could
even block you out of the network until you reset the access point. These
default passwords are well known and well publicized. Just look on the Web
page of your vendor, and we bet you can find a copy of the user’s guide for
your access point available for download. Anyone who wants to know them
does know them.
When you change the default SSID on your access point to one of your own
making, you also need to change the SSID setting of any computers (or other
devices) that you want to connect to your LAN. To do this, follow the steps
we discuss in this part’s earlier chapters.