How to Password-Protect a Wireless Network

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chris Bryce with superservice.com. I'm going to show you how to password protect a wireless network. The easiest way to go about doing this, is to make sure first of all, that you have the website address, or the IP address to the website configuration file for the router. Now to connect to that, it's normally going to be an IP address of something like, 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.0.1, something similar to that. Now on this particular instance, our wireless router is set up at, 192.168.1.15, so we're going to go to that website address in our Internet Explorer web browser, or Netscape, or whatever browser you happen to use. So I'm typing that address in, I'll go to that wireless routers configuration page, and it'll ask me to log in when I go to change any settings. Some of the routers will ask you to log in right when you go to the web page. As a note, net gear routers, usually don't have that IP address anymore, they have something like, www.routerlogin.net to connect to their configuration page. Once you're at the configuration page, you go to the wireless security settings, which on this one are under the wireless tab. So I'm going to wireless, and then wireless security, and I'm going to select the type of security that I want to use. Normally you're going to want to use a WEP security setting. Then it's going to ask you for a key to confirm the password for that. This key is going to actually act as your password for when you're going to connect to your wireless network. So we're going to go ahead and type in here, 1,2,3,4,5. You can use 5 or 10 digit hexadecimal or text characters, if you're going to be using a 64 bit encryption. If you want to go with something more secure, you can use a 128 bit, which is going to require your pass phrase or key to be 13 or 26 digits. So, we're going to go ahead and type that password in, which again, we're going to use, 1,2,3,4,5, and then select, okay, and save. Once those settings are saved, the wireless router will restart, and to connect to it from now on, you're going to need to type in that password. That's how you password protect a wireless network."