Securing wireless router

[Athley]

Can you tell me how to secure the wireless router? Have recently bought a lap top and someone mentioned we should secure the wireless router.
Help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[Ethel]

What make/model router do you have?

Ideally, you should connect to the router by ethernet cable and access the administration page.
This is to make sure you don't block access to yourself!

Try typing the following into the address bar (not the search bar):

http://192.168.1.1/

[Athley]

Hi Ethel

Thanks for your really quick reply.

Its a Belkin Ltd (micradigital) cable/DSL router 802.11g wireless.

Is that helpful? or do you need more? I certainly don't want to lock myself out of the laptop - eek!

:o)

[Ethel]

Ok. Are you connected by ethernet?

Firstly, make sure you know where the reset button is. If anything goes wrong, press that for 10 seconds and the settings will be restored to default.

Have you typed that address in the address bar and can you see the set up page?

[fo3nix]

Once you've connected your router via an ethernet cable and can get to the 192.168.1.1 page (or similar address), goto the wireless settings part of that site.

You want to enable encryption: WPA-PSK if it asks you, and not WEP (if you have the choice anyway).

Then you want to choose a good, strong password: letters and numbers, ideally random. Write it down somewhere and keep it safe.

Then also, change your SSID name of the wireless network (it'll say it somewhere on that 192.168 site) to something that you can remember, and write that too. Also change the password of the 192.168 page itself: it's probably set to 'password' or similar now, with a username of 'admin'.

Finally, there may be a box ticked to say 'broadcast SSID'. untick this, so that the SSID is no longer broadcast.

that'll be about as secure as you can make it.

[Ethel]

And enable MAC filtering.

[Athley]

Thanks both of you will print your instructions and follow through - maybe tomorrow let u know how we get on.

Thanks again we don;t know anything about compuyers so really appreciate your advice,

;o)