How to secure any Wireless router

Why secure your wireless access?

1. Your neighbor will get free internet and slow you down, and this is the least of your concerns. 2. Unsecured access to your router can leave you vulnerable to man in the middle attack which is someone who gained access to your router and now is sitting in between you and the internet to steal valuable information such as bank, credit card and any other type of valuable information available. 3. Unauthorized access to your router can leave with legal matters. When someone is downloading illegal content such as music, movies and more serious child pornography on your network you are the one they will contact. Once your ISP Internet Service Provider gets a subpoena from a federal or state agency they are forced to give them your information and you can expect a visit from the authorities, whether you did it or not. Do not leave yourself exposed to such threats, when it is really easy to secure your network whether its a new or old router. In the following instructions I will show how to access any router without a disk or any previous knowledge on how to configure a router and encrypt the wireless access. To make the configuration easier you will the following.

Materials needed
Computer with an Ethernet adapter this is the connection where you plug in via a cable. Wireless Router and its power supply. Ethernet cable (recommended). Always comes included with router.

Instructions
These instructions are to secure your wireless portion of your router only; todays routers have many functions, capabilities and can be very robust for security. However for the scope of these instructions they are for securing the wireless router. Step 1 Power up the computer and wireless router Note this can be done wirelessly too, the reason that it is recommended that you use an Ethernet cable is because you will not lose connectivity to the router when you apply new settings and avoid having to reconnect again and again. Step 2 Plug in your laptop or desktop to the routers port 1-4 any port will do, with an Ethernet cable.

Now that it connected and powered up. We need to access it in order to configure it. In order to access any router we need the IP address of the default gateway. In order get this information we need to open a command prompt. In windows 8 go to the studio design and just type cmd anywhere and the application will appear click on the application and it will open the command prompt. I will illustrate this on a windows 8 computer in a video as well.

For windows Vista and 7 click on the windows sign to open your programs and in the search box type in cmd and press enter or click on the application this will open the command prompt.

For windows XP click start and in the run box type in cmd and press enter or ok this will open the command prompt.

Now that the command prompt is open the commands are the same in all of the operation systems mentioned before. The command prompt will look like image below showing your computer name instead of local user. Step 3 Open the command prompt

Step 4 Type in ipconfig and press enter. This will populate the information needed.

The image above will be similar to yours. Step 5 Locate the field by the method you are connected. If you are connected via Ethernet cables then look for the field that has Ethernet adapter or Local area network. If you are connected via wireless then look for the field that has Wireless LAN or Wi-Fi connection. Underneath the respected field you will find the IPv4, Subnet Mask and the Default Gateway. Write down the IP address of the Default Gateway field, in this case it is 10.0.0.1 . Step 6 Close the command prompt. Here we can see the unsecured network on a Windows 8 machine.

Step 7 Open any internet browser, IE Internet exploder, Fire Fox, Chrome, Opera or Safari, whichever you prefer. Step 8 Locate the URL bar on top of your screen. Step 9 Type in the IP address of the default gateway in the URL bar and click enter or the arrow.

This action will either bring one of two possible splash pages. One will ask for a username and password, the other will ask you to setup the network. For your information Linksys, Netgear, Dlink, Cisco home, Trendnet and Intellinet routers will all use admin for the username. All these routers will have one of the following passwords either blank no password, admin, password or 1234 these password will let you access 95% of all factory defaulted routers. Both fields are in lowercase.

User name admin admin admin admin

Possible password admin password 1234 blank leave this field empty

If for some reason these passwords dont work contact the manufacture website. If the router was previously configured and dont remember the routers password which is different than the Wi-Fi password, then look in the back or bottom of the wireless router for a reset button. With the router powered on press and hold the reset button for 30 seconds this will set the router to factory defaults. Back to step 3. Step 9 Enter the credentials mentioned above to access the router and click Log In. For this router it is username admin and password admin

Step 10 Click on the Wireless tab.

Step 11 Enter a name in the SSID field. This is the Wi-Fi name that is broadcasted to identify your signal. I will put ENGL219! for these instructions.

Step 12 Select encryption type. First type of encryption WEP is extremely vulnerable and should not be used for obvious reasons. Second type of encryption WPA-PSK [TKIP] was the encryption to address the flaws of WEP and uses 256 bit encryption significantly stronger than WEP. Third type of encryption WPA2-PSK[AES] this superseded WPA because of the mandatory AES encryption which is even stronger encryption, any WPA2 vulnerably are limited to enterprise level networks and not to the home. Lastly WPA-PSK[TKIP] + WPA2-PSK[AES] Has the same encryption strength as AES but has a fallback method in case you have an older device and does not support AES encryption, this way the device will still connect although on TKIP encryption. If you would like specific information about encryption types please refer to following exterior link as it can be a document in itself. http://www.howtogeek.com/167783/htg-explains-the-difference-between-wep-wpa-and-wpa2wireless-encryption-and-why-it-matters/

Step 13 Type in a password 8-63 characters in length

Step 14 Click apply Step 15 Reconnect with the new security settings.

You are now secured!

Citations http://www.howtogeek.com/167783/htg-explains-the-difference-between-wep-wpa-and-wpa2wireless-encryption-and-why-it-matters/

Image http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/ukp.aspx?pid=80&vw=1&articleid=3733