Measures to secure our Internet

Nowadays everybody is using a wireless router, but the question is how secure is it? I guaranteed that most of America when first getting a wireless router has an open connection or WEP security encryption, and a WEP encryption can be cracked quite easily with tools you can download off the internet for free to enter your realm of the internet. Now the question lies how do I protect myself? Well thats why I’m here to answer.

I have broken down the different ways to protect yourself through router by breaking it down into three levels:

1. Wireless encryption
2. Unnamed connection
3. Mac Authentication

Wireless Encryption

In order to protect your data from outsiders, you should encrypt, or scramble, it so that nobody else can read it.  Hence why wireless encryption was created. When selecting an encryption you have to choose between WEP or WPA.

WEP was the encryption scheme included with the first generation of wireless networking equipment. It is very easy to crack and contain several vulnerabilities. So don’t go with this!

WPA was created after WEP to solve this problem. WPA has a significantly stronger wireless encryption but the stronger security impacts performance. So you will not be able to download as quick as you use too.

Unnamed connection

A unnamed connection is the next level of encryption that works in a completely different way.  With an unnamed connection it doesn’t display the ID or name of the connection. So a hacker will not only have to figure out an encrypted password they will also have to figure out the name so that they can connect to it which can be a big headache.

Mac Authentication

Remember that headache we were talking about to give the hacker. Mac Authentication can give the migraine. Mac Authentication is the process of selecting what devices are allowed to connect to the router. The way you would do this is finding out your mac address of your computer and having it registered into the router’s software. After doing so hackers will have to decrypt your password, find out the connection name and figure out a way to connect to your router or get ahold of your laptop or desktop.

All of the features I have mention in this article can be found on the newest routers such as linksys or netgear.