Wireless Network security does not have to be something you leave to the specialists. This article will give you detailed information on how to secure your Wi-Fi Network against signal intercepting, hackers and other threats.

Although Wi-Fi has and obvious advantage: you can use any device without having to link cables, there is one problem: bandwidth can easily be stolen by people even from the next building.

This bandwidth theft is called piggybanking and it’s a serious problem that can increase your Internet bill, decrease the Internet speed or even become a security risk.

This is why you should consider securing your Wi-Fi network. And this extensive tutorial will take you through a number of steps that work in that direction.

How to secure a Wi-Fi network:

First of all, you need to access the settings for your wireless router. For most users, this can be done by entering the following numbers in a web browser: “192.168.1.1″ and entering the login information for your router.

If you entered the numbers in the browser, but it did not work as we described, read the user manual that came with your wireless router or make a search on Google for it.

Now that you accessed the security settings, you should change the default password. If you already did that, it’s always a good idea to create a stronger password. This change of the default password is required because if you don’t do it, everyone can use your Wi-Fi by entering the default admin / password combination or other default passwords.

The next step should be enabling encryption on the Wireless network. This will make it harder for hackers to access your Wi-Fi network. For most routers, this is achieved by entering the configuration page, accessing the security settings (or wireless security settings). WEP is a standard that is not that advanced, but it is compatible with most hardware. If you know that your hardware is compatible with WPA or WPA2 encryption methods, choose either of them instead.

A more advanced security step you can take is to filter the MAC addresses on your wireless network. A MAC address is an unique code that is assigned to your device. You cannot change it. If you make sure that your Wi-Fi network accepts only devices that match a MAC address from a list, you increase the security of your network by a massive degree. What you have to do is make up a list with all the MAC addresses of the devices that you will connect to the network and go to the administrative settings of your router, set up MAC filtering and enter the addresses that you collected earlier. Tip: for Windows users, type “ipconfig” in the run box. The MAC address will be listed under “physical address”.

Another measure you can take to increase the security of your Wireless network is to shorten the range of the Wi-Fi signal to the level you use it. To do this, try switching to other protocols (802.11g for instance) or making sure the router is not placed in a open space (meaning: do exactly opposite of what router producers say you should to in order to increase the range)

One final step you should take is to upgrade the firmware for your Router. Firmware upgrades are free. Find out more on your router producer’s official website.