So you’ve just gotten home from buying whatever wireless router your friends told you to get, well that or whatever the salesman suckered you into. (Subliminal message: Linksys WRT54G)

You want to setup a handfull of computers in your house to partake in the new wireless party, except for one little problem: you don’t know what you’re doing.

This is where we come in. This is a generalized article on how to setup a basic wireless network. I’m going to try to write it in a way that regardless of what router you have, you’ll be able to use this to figure yours out and get the job done. This is a pretty basic article, so i’m not trying to totally cover everything here. The best way to learn about things is to read and do them yourself. There is no better teacher than experience.

Routers:

Linksys WRT54 Products

A router, routes things. It’s pretty simple. You plug it in, and plug your computers into it via ethernet, or you let the wireless part take care of that, and from there it’s just a little configuration and boom, you can share files, browse the net, whatever you want. Enough on those.

Each brand of wireless router usually has a different method of configuration. This is everything from the IP you connect to it through, to the way the interface is laid out. They all usually use a 192.168.x.x IP, and all the interfaces have roughly the same kind of buttons, though.

The parts we’re concerned with deal with IP assignment, MAC filtering, and the type of encryption that’s active.

Hopefully all of you have a router that lets you use WPA. If not, please at least use WEP. It’s not much protection, but it’s something to slow a lazy wardriver down.

Quick Note on Wardriving:

Wardriving is basically the practice of driving around looking for wireless networks. Mapping them out, and even hacking into them if one is so inclined. You care about wardrivers because if you don’t secure your router, and they leech off of you, anything they do while they’re connected to your router is your responsibility in a court of law, not theirs. So if they like to download kiddy porn, you can get into trouble for them doing it.

DHCP vs Static IP:

Going to make this one quick. DHCP is automatic assignment of IP addresses. In this part of your control panel you can view who is currently assigned an IP on your network. You can control how long they get to use that IP before they have to renew it, as well as how many IP addresses the router will assign before it stops giving them out. This is important for securing the router, as it’s one step in the process. Always limit the number of available IP addresses to the number of machines you will be using. You can always add to this if a buddy comes over or what not, so don’t worry.

Static IP is even better, but a little more work in setting up. This allows you total control over the assignment of IP addresses, but still isn’t perfectly safe. Regardless, the additional setup requires you to use the router’s IP as your Gateway and DNS servers, so don’t forget that.

MAC Filtering

There is more information here than I can even think to type up. The concept however is simple. You can either deny certian MAC addresses from connecting to your router, or allow only certain ones and deny the rest. Obviously the second option is better and easier for us.

Encryption:

I’ve touched on this with my WEP vs WPA article, but configuration is actually pretty self-explanatory, and Firewalling.com has an excellent resource for virtually every router out there. You figure out whether you have WPA or if you’re stuck with WEP (NEVER use WEP if you have WPA or better available). It all works the same though, you generate a key, and you use that key in your wireless configuration in Windows or Linux to connect to the router.  Use this key generator to generate your keys.

Using the last 3 things separately is good, but using them together is outstanding diligence. You want to deter possible hackers as much as possible, so they move onto your neighbor’s unsecured network rather than yours.

Things to Note:

• Don’t try to connect 20 computers to the same 3mbps Cox connection. It just isn’t good.
• Weather can influence the quality of your wireless signal. So can living next to a whole bunch of transformers and power lines.
• Throughput on wireless isn’t quite the same as with a regular LAN. If you’re copying lots of files between computers, use a physical connection. It’ll save you time and grief.

Port Forwarding:

Gamers, this is your section. Port Forwarding is used instead of enabling the DMZ, because it still provides you with a good level of security. If you need certain ports available for certain applications, you can do that here. All you do is specify the port number, the protocol being used, and the IP address it’s going to forward to. Be sure you know which IP is what on your network, you might end up giving the wrong person the info.

Thoughts:

Most people don’t secure their networks. In my experience about 6 out of every 10 routers is totally wide open, just plugged in and never touched. Secure your networks!!