Originally Posted By: odessit
WRT54 (whatever model) is a fine wireless router. There are other manufacturers too...
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Once you connect the router, remember to encrypt (use WPA-PSK) the wireless communication and do MAC address filtering. You can find the MAC addresses by going to start/run and type
cmd for command prompt. There, do
ipconfig /all. The MAC address is the Physical Address.
This way, your communication will be encrypted and no other devices besides the ones you allow will be able to attempt to connect to the router.
MAC filtering is a last ditch effort. It is redundant if one is using WPA and very easy to circumvent. MAC filtering only increases administrative overhead and serves no useful purpose. Same goes for hiding SSID. Both are trivial to spoof.
WPA (1&2) provide authentication mechanism through the use of PSK (preshared key) or other methods. If the PSK is sufficiently large (12 random characters as a bare minimum) - nobody will be able to authenticate to the router and your traffic will be encrypted.
Originally Posted By: tmorris1
I have a pretty big house and with the router in the basement and it covers the whole house just fine.
The size of the house does not matter much. The main problem is electrical interference and blocking of signals.
However getting an overkill router will decrease the amount of aggravation, that's for sure, but I never had to deal with RangeMax.
As an overview:
1. Change your SSID from default so it does not conflict with neighbors
2. Set large enough PSK using random character, numbers and symbols
3. If you want to hide SSID or implement MAC filtering - go for it, but it is more work for you
Great post!!!
Agreed 100%.