uppose your kids got a gift from Santa Claus and it turns out to be a wireless network. You unpacked the boxes, setup all the connections and run the setup software. Now you can use high speed internet in all the computers in your house. Works fine, right? Not exactly!
The first thing you must know about out of the box wireless networking is that it is not secured. Which means the next door kid can get a wireless card for his computer and easily access your high speed network. Moreover, he might access things he is not supposed to in his age. Best of all, he gets to browse the web for high speed for absolutely no price.
There is more to it than just free browsing. If you are sharing files between your computers, your neighbor now will be able to get access to your files through the wireless network. Specially, if you have sensitive data like personal pictures, turbo tax etc. this can be pretty harmful. Not only your neighbor but anyone with a laptop can use your internet from the street and enjoy the same privileges.
However, you can easily prevent this problem. Take the router manual and just take a quick peek at it. Try to find out how to get to the configuration screen of the router. Most of the wireless router can be configured via web browser. From the configuration screen, turn on WEP which stands for Wireless Encryption Protocol. WEP helps you protect your wireless network and your files by encrypting your network. To get access to the network, you must enter a hexadecimal code that works like password. Now you can have a secure wireless network.