Wireless Network Security?

How can I make it so people have to type in a password to access my wireless network. I have a Linksys 2.4Ghz-802.11b router with a cable connection. I have myself directly connected as well as two other family members connecting with laptops. One is a mac. I want to make the network more secure. I've seen other networks where you need to type a password to access the internet. How can I get it so users have to type in a password to enter my network?

Wireless Network Security?
There are a number of ways you can accomplish this.





The easiest way with what you have said:





Your Linksys has the ability to have a couple of security features.





The first one is SSID. Go to your configuration page (GUI) of your Linksys. Select to hide the SSID. Then after that, change it to something only you know. Change it frequently or when you want to make sure that only certain people that are allowed on your network know what it is.





The second and more cumbersome if you have a lot of users, is to use the WEP/WPA feature. You can enable this feature on your Linksys and it also will only allow certain users with this WEP/WPA key to access your router for internet.





If you don't want to worry about SSID passwords or Encryption keys, you could also just get the MAC addresses for each computer you want to allow on the internet and enable that feature to allow only the computers that you have MAC addresses for. This way you can shut them down or allow a certain time period of your users.





I hope this helps, good luck
Reply:Im not sure about the password but i would recommend to hide your ssid. what this does, is that it hides your wireless network from other people. you can do this through your wireless control panel.





if you do not know how, go to this website http://whatismyipaddress.com/





copy and paste your ip address to your; internet location bar. you should able to access your options through this.
Reply:You'll have to go to your router (usually by typing 192.168.0.1 into your web browser)





Log into that, and enable WPA encryption. You'll need to provide a password, and I'd suggest making it a secure one. You'll only need to type it in once, so it doesn't really matter if you remember it or not.








Check out http://www.grc.com/pass for more info on password security.
Reply:There's a couple of free packages linked in the source that let you run your wifi like a hotspot.

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