How do you secure an internet connection?

[lintdrummer]

Hello! Well at a very basic level securing your internet connection means ensuring that only you have access to said connection. While it is not imperative on a desktop (such as your mac) it is quite important when you have a wireless router in operation.
What you want to do is prevent strangers who are in range of your router's radio signal from using and abusing your internet connection. What you need to do is 'encrypt' your internet connection. Put simply you want to set a password that must be entered by anyone wishing to use your internet connection.

The internet address you use to change the router's settings varies from router to router but uncle google tells me that to access your particular model's interface you open up internet explorer and type in 192.168.0.1 in the address bar and click go or hit enter on your keyboard. The user manual for the router will tell you the correct numbers to type in if that address doesn't work.

You will then see a login screen. Generally the username is set to "admin" and the password to "password". Again your user manual will have the details. Once you have entered these in you will see all the options your router has to offer. First thing to do is to change the login name and password to something more secure to prevent anyone else from accessing your router settings.

Then you should see an option "Wireless security options". There are two types of encryption: WEP and WPA. WPA is the more secure option. Activate it and set the password you want to us. The password will have to be a certain length eg. 6 or 13 characters long.

That will be a major improvement on your internet security.

By the way, you should do all of this on the Mac that is physically connected to the router, don't use the wireless laptop.

Hope this helps!