Tiss

Could someone help me please, my g/f's wireless router can be seen and used by othre people in the street, how do I stop this please??

Thanks

Chris

JackClark

Find out the name of the router and then search for that name and wireless security. If that's a bit much let us know the name of the router, there's probably a guide out there.

Tiss

sorry yeh, it's a netgear 834 router

LostUser

As far as I know, Netgear don't do just an 834. It probably starts DG834 and ends with either G, GT or N.

If you go to netgear.co.uk you can see a list of product codes.

Either way the answer should be the same.

The article linked to below explains what you need to know. If the link doesn't work properly, go to Wireless network adsl broadband routers for business and home networking. Select your model from the dropdown list, in the knowledge base search field enter "security" and hit search. I think it was the top result.

NETGEAR - Configuring Wireless Security (WEP/WPA/Access list)

JackClark

1. Connect a computer to any one of the four LAN ports of the NETGEAR router.
2. Open an Internet explorer and type the router IP address which would be either http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.1 in the address bar and press Enter.
3. The Login window will be prompting for a Username and Password. The default Username is admin and the default Password is password
4. Click Wireless Settings under Setup menu.
5. Under Security Options, select WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)
6. Enter a word or group of printable characters in the Passphrase box. The Passphrase must be 8 to 63 characters in length.
7. Click Apply

Tiss

Cheers for the help people, I will try and do that when she gets in,

also can anyone recommend a good firewall and virus killer please?


Thanks again

Chris

Markus

For Antivirus, I'd look at something like AVG. There is a free version and it's rather good. You should also have some anti spyware software and I'd go for the free version of Ad-Aware 2007 by Lavasoft.

As for a firewall, depends on what you want to do really. The router/modem may well have a firewall component so you could use that. Alternatively XP SP2 does have a built in software firewall, so that could be used, or you could get something like Zone Alarm Pro, which is another software firewall.
If you want to get hardcore then you could get a separate hardware firewall. I think most people would use the firewall in their router/modem, or the builtin firewall in XP.

Tiss

I put AVG her laptop when she first got it and it made the computer run s***e, very slow etc so took it off.

mart360

Avast anti virus (free)

comodo firewall (free)

you say avg made her system run slow...

it does to my wifes, every sunday morning... its because its running its scan at that time, other than that, you,d hardly know it was there


i only changed, as i found avast to be a lot better

mart

Sosbanite

For antivirus/firewall I use this F-Secure.com > Antivirus and intrusion prevention solutions for home users and businesses

Good results, reasonably priced and does not hit PC performance as Norton or Macafee do.
As mentioned by Marcus, Ad aware is also worth loading on.

With regard to securing the wireless router there are a few things that you can do.
Go into the router config on the web browser and access the wireless page.
Then go to "set up access list" and configure the router to only accept a connection from your g/f's PC by restricting it to the MAC address for her PC.
On her PC. Go start, run, "cmd", enter then "ipconfig/all" enter to get the MAC address. It will be a 12 character string listed as "physical address".
When you have entered the MAC address into the router turn the access control on via the tick box at the top of the page.
Then, as mentioned by Jack, you will need to set your encryption on both the router and the PC - it's pretty obvious what to do.
Finally untick the box that allows the broadcast of the router name (SSID) so no one can see it and the job's a good un!

HTH!

mike1210

To secure a router, MAC filtering and SSID hiding doesn't really provide much if any security. WPA or WPA2 encryption with a long password is the way to go

NETGEAR - Configuring Wireless Security (WEP/WPA/Access list)

The encryption stops people viewing the data, the long password stops people guessing the password.

Make a long passwrod here

Generate a Secure Password - kurtm.net

also read the article on the page

also recommend you change the router login password to something complex