Help, Doubt abt Wireless Router ????

[Guest]

Can anyone advise me if my current router does not have any password set in it and few of my neighbours is using their wireless card to connect to my router. Will this slow down my broadband speed and why? ?????

thank in advance for advice....

[Strong Eagle]

Yes, if you have not set encryption in your router, then anyone with a wireless card can use your router to connect to the internet. My laptop can automatically search for available wireless access points. I can almost always find a router or two at an airport that is not encrypted.

Yes, it will slow your speed because they will be using some part of yout total bandwidth. If they are only reading email, you'll hardly notice any change... if they are downloading a lot of images or music, you will slow down.

[cyber_m0nkey]

encryption will help and certainly make it more difficult, but it won't stop the committed hacker - don't need much knowledge just to know where to search for the instructions.

Make sure you do the follwing;

- certainly setup encryption AND
- don't publish the SSID AND
- use the MAC address security feature in your access point - to limit access to your PC/laptop only.
- limit your access point admini to wired only, i.e. disable remote configuration to stop people guessing the password to your access point - this is the simplest thing for security that most people forget to do - guessing a password is alot easier then trying to crack encryption or guess an SSID...

In combination this will make it overly difficult for anyone to bother except the most committed and experienced.

[techie]

Use WPA encryption with a very long random key. The other measures are optional (and annoying).