How to secure your home or office wireless network

Wireless Networking

A wireless network uses radio frequencies to transmit data through the air. You can create two types of wireless networks: an ad hoc mode wireless network or an infrastructure mode wireless

With ad hoc mode, the wireless device, such as a laptop, is connected to other wireless devices in a peer-to-peer environment without the need for a wireless access point. With infrastructure mode, the wireless client sends data to the access point, which then sends the data on to the destination on the wireless network.

The advantage of ad hoc mode is that you don’t  need to purchase the access point, but the benefit of infrastructure mode is that you can use the wireless access point to control who can connect to the wireless network and to filter out types of network traffic.

Channels

Channel is a frequency range of the wireless network. Most wireless devices allow you to specify which channel you would like to use. This is important because if you find that you are having trouble with your wireless network, probably the wireless devices are conflicting with each other or interfering with other wireless devices in your area. To avoid interference on the wireless network from other household items, try to buy items like cordless phones that run on a frequency other than 2.4 GHz, or try to change the channel on the wireless equipment and see if a different channel is more reliable.

Antenna Types

Wireless network use two major antenna types, omnidirectional and directional. Omnidirectional antennas can send and receive signals in any direction, covering a 360-degree radius. Directional antennas can only send and receive signal in a single direction. The wireless access point (antenna) should be placed in the center of the building and not close to the outer walls of the building in order to limit connections from outsiders.

Securing a Wireless Network

Wireless networks are usually considered to be more vulnerable than other networks. You can use various techniques to prevent unauthorized persons from connecting to your wireless network. You may want to implement some or all of these features. To help secure your wireless network, consider changing settings on the router such as the admin password, the SSID, and MAC filtering, to name a few.

Antenna Placement

Many installers make the mistake of treating 802.11 WLANs just like Ethernet, placing access points (APs) in locations that facilitate outsider access to corporate networks. But, from a security perspective, WLANs should be treated like the Internet — a network composed of trusted and untrusted users. Again, place wireless access point (antenna)  in the center of the building and not close to the outer walls of the building in order to limit connections from outsiders.

Change Admin Password

The first thing you must do when you take the wireless router out of the box and plug it in change the admin password. The admin password is needed to connect to the web administration pages and change the settings of the router. All routers have a default admin password, so be sure to change it. When you perform any administration functions through web pages, it is important to use HTTPS instead of HTTP. In this example, you may need to configure the wireless router for HTTPS if it is not enabled by default.

Change Set Identifier (SSID)

The Service Set Identifier (SSID) is a name that you give the wireless network, and in order for someone to connect to your network, that person needs to know the SSID. Any client who wishes to connect to your wireless network will need to specify the SSID name in their wireless network card settings.

The problem is that most wireless routers are configured to advertise this SSID automatically, so even if you change the SSID to something hard to guess, the router shows the name. This mean any individual  can connect to your network by name without knowing in advance the name of the network because the router is advertising it. To fix this, configure your router to not advertise the SSID. This will prevent Windows users from displaying a list of wireless networks that includes your network.

Captive Portal

An usual method used by wireless hotspots is known as captive portal, which forces a person to authenticate to the network via a web page before Internet access is allowed.