Wireless Setup and Security

Wireless Internet has been with us for a while now - in some countries, most homes have wireless routers, almost everyone prefers a wireless connection to the Internet, over a wired one. Internet service providers offer wireless routers with their contracts, it is very tempting to get one even if your computer doesn't support wireless networking, because you may need it later.

It is one thing to own a wireless router, it is all together another thing to understand how it works and setting up a wireless network and secure it properly. We get a lot of troubles with our wireless network connections – knowing a few tips will help you understand and manage your network with less hassle.

There are not many things you need to do to setup your wireless network. In most cases reading the manual that came in the box is enough. You need to check it eventually, you need to know the routers address. Most people never even thought of accessing it, they call their ISP or call out technicians if their Internet goes down.

The first thing you have to do is check the manual to see that address, it is usually 192.168.0.1 or similar. Assuming you have all the IP addresses, passwords and other info that your ISP should have sent you, you can go ahead and login into your router.

Once you are there, you can use a wizards or whatever you have on your router to setup your network. You have to set these important settings for your wireless to work and for you to be able to connect to it:

1. Your network name as it will appear when you search for wireless networks, that usually is called SSID – set it so that it is broadcasted.
2. You have to set your region or your continent.
3. You have to set a specific channel on which your router will broadcast signals. Use channel 1, 6 or 11.
4. Select your mode, most adapters these days support b/g standards even new n standard. If you want to have full speeds of your network - you must have hardware that supports those speed on both sides.
5. Select a protection type - we recommend WPA, as it protects better than WEP.

WPA uses a phrase that you can come up with and is in most cases uncrackable. It is good to have a long easy password to remember with inclusion of a few numbers. In some cases you have a choice of different WPA protections, choose the one that works with your hardware. WEP passwords are crackable, if you don't have admin password set on your router – someone can take over and block you out of your own wireless network, so setup passwords where you can.

We hope these basic tips come in handy for you.
Don't forget to visit our blog again soon for more great tips on wireless.