When you operate a wireless network in your home, it provides you and your family the ability to connect to the internet from anywhere in your home. However, most people forget that the signals sent out by wireless routers extend far beyond the walls of your home, sometimes by over 250 feet! This means that your network is accessible to anyone within this range. People accessing your network can leech off your internet bandwidth, tap into your files, and possibly even access critical personal information such as usernames and passwords.

The worst part about all this however, is that most people with wireless networks have absolutely nothing preventing any unwanted outside connections. Try this: next time you have someone over with a laptop capable of accessing wireless internet, ask them to connect to your network. If you have not manually changed any settings for your wireless router, this will be a simple click of the mouse. This is because wireless routers generally do not have security measures enabled by default.

Even scarier is that now there is a practice called "Wardriving" where hackers drive around with high powered antennas capable of detecting wireless internet gateways from afar, looking for unsecured wireless networks and exploit them.

Implementing a form of wireless internet security, generally protecting yourself from unwanted outsiders, is actually quite basic. While the following tips are NOT fool proof, they will do more than enough to deter 99% of people trying to break into your wireless network.

First of all, because not all routers are made by the same manufacturers, you may have to refer to the user manual included with your router. Most router settings pages can be reached by the following method.

1. Go to your start menu, choose "Run".
2. Type in "cmd".
3. Once the MSDOS prompt comes up, type in "ipconfig".
4. The ip address you see next to "Default Gateway" is the address you must type into your Internet Explorer or Firefox (Recommended) address bar. (example 192.168.1.1)
5. Once you do this, a username/password prompt should pop up. Refer to your user manual for the default password. Generally, it is simply any username with password "admin".

Now that you are able to access your router settings pages, I strongly recommend you follow these wireless internet security tips as soon as possible: (Please refer to your user manual if needed, should all be under a wireless tab or security tab)

1. Change your Wireless Network Name (SSID)
A hacker can easily guess the default manufacturer SSID, so make this something different, preferably something fairly obscure.

2. Change your router default username and password
If you are still using this, it is a very good idea to change these to prevent others from accessing these router settings pages.

3. Enable Encryption
This is the most important step to implementing wireless internet security. This is almost like a password in a sense to access your network, however it serves to encrypt all information sent and recieved so intercepting the data is useless. A 128-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) or WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) code is created and any person who wishes to access your network must have this code. Click here for a random WEP key generator. WPA is a more recent, advanced method of encryption and should be used over WEP if available.

4. Use Firewalls
Most routers come with a basic hardware firewall which you can enable. While it is not very technologically advanced, it does help a great deal in preventing attacks. You should also be running a firewall on the software side. While Windows XP provides an integrated firewall, I highly recommend investing in Lavasoft Personal Firewall 2.0 which is a far superior alternative.

With these basic wireless internet security tips, you can prevent any outsiders from accessing your wireless network.