How to secure your home network

Why do I need to secure it?

A lot of broadband solutions these days come with usage caps to make them cheaper. If you have unsecured wireless access, your neighbours (intentionally or not) may be accessing your internet connection and contributing to your usage.

Even if you don't have a cap, and don't care if your neighbours occasionally use your internet connection, you should still secure your access. This is becoming more important as people are actively searching out open access points to use. Sometimes this is just due to them being cheap and not wanting to pay for internet access, sometimes this is because they are away from home and need to check their email or something, but there are also people who will use your internet connection for illegal activities, from cracking and spamming, to more socially unacceptable behaviour.

What do I need to do?

The first thing you need to do is get your wireless access working without any security. This may seem obvious to some, but if you try to enable security straight away, then you will run into all sorts of problems. This is one of the reasons why manufacturers do not enable security by default on their access points. The cost of the hardware would double, just to pay for all the support staff taking calls!

The second thing to remember is, if possible, do the configuration of the access point from a computer that is hardwired to your network using a standard ethernet cable. If you are trying to set up security over a wireless connection, you could find yourself halfway through the process and not being able to access the access point's configuration screen!

WEP, WPA, whats all this?

There are two main types of security you can set up, these are WEP and WPA. WEP was the first system to come along, and most equipment will support it. It is however, very weak and will only put off the casual freeloader. WPA is a lot stronger, and in some respects easier to use.