How do you protect your wireless LAN from hackers?

WiFi Security

No network is completely unprotected from hackers. Anyone can hack anything with the proper know-how and expertise, just look at the guy who's standing trial for hacking into Pentagon computers and shutting several of their networks for a week! What you need to do is secure your network. The following are three methods for doing so:

To keep your network private, you can use one of the following methods:

Wired Equivalency Privacy (WEP) uses 64-bit or 128-bit encryption. 128-bit encryption is the more secure option. Anyone who wants to use a WEP-enabled network has to know the WEP key, which is usually a numerical password.

WiFi Protected Access (WPA) is a step up from WEP and is now part of the 802.11i wireless network security protocol. It uses temporal key integrity protocol encryption. As with WEP, WPA security involves signing on with a password. Most public hotspots are either open or use WPA or 128-bit WEP technology.

Media Access Control (MAC) address filtering is a little different from WEP or WPA. It doesn't use a password to authenticate users - it uses a computer's physical hardware. Each computer has its own unique MAC address. MAC address filtering allows only machines with specific MAC addresses to access the network. You must specify which addresses are allowed when you set up your router. This method is very secure, but if you buy a new computer or if visitors to your home want to use your network, you'll need to add the new machines' MAC addresses to the list of approved addresses.

First answer by Mothra820. Last edit by Mothra820. Contributor trust: 320 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 13 [recommend question]