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Wireless LAN, bit encryption, and the Best Buy computer salesman

So, I bought my new computer last Friday. A Hewlett Packard 7334n. It's pretty sweet. It has an AMD Athalon 64 dual core chip, 2G RAM, 250G hard drive and I bought a 2nd, internal 160G hard drive. 20 inch Samsung LCD monitor, speakers, ups battery backup, and a few other goodies. I ordered Comcast broadband today.

Both the Comp USA salesman and the Best Buy salesman recommended a front-end router for security. Apparently the front end router has it's own IP address and if a hacker comes down the line they'll run into the router, not be sure what's behind it or where it is, and possibly move on to an easier target. Securing the wireless LAN is an issue though, according to the Best Buy salesman, who tried to sell me a service visit to ensure that the "bit encryption was properly set up on the LAN for maximum security." Everyone else I have spoken to, including Cisco certified networking techs and other IT professionals tell me the salesman is full of u know what. What should I believe?

Answers:

Its very easy to do it yourself: set the wireless encryption (WEP) to at least 128 bit, and turn off the broadcasting of your network name. All this can be done by logging into your router and setting it up. the instructions should come with your router. Also change the name of the SSID (network name). As you said, follwo the directions that come with the router and it's not very difficult.

If you truly want to secure your wireless network, disable SSID broadcasts, and exclude ALL MAC addresses from the allowed pool except for your own machines. There is also a little software utility that's free from a company called AirDefense that keeps your wireless clients safe from intrusion. And as was said, we can all help you do that, don't listen to some BestBuy hack.

I just bought a Linksys Wireless-G card for my desktop and their Wireless-G router, I pressed a button on the router during setup, and I had an instantly configured WPA-encrypted Wireless LAN. Whatever you do, I recommend buying the same brand router as the Wireless card you have. I'm assuming that your 7334n is a desktop and that you need to buy a wireless network card if you haven't already.

A good router coupled with the Windows Firewall is probably sufficient, assuming you aren't serving up content that could attract random attention. Simply blocking any inbound connections will protect you from most hacks and a good anti-virus/anti-spyware program will take care of the rest. But it is important to put a relatively good firewall/router at the frontgate. Norton Internet Security and even Norton AntiVirus can cripple system performance depending on the version and/or the other system processes with which it has to interact/co-exist. Norton's tools are quite comprehensive and effective, but they are often unpredictable in their interactions with other software apps/services. I'd probably go with McAfee or AVGFree.

Posted by James Trotta at March 7, 2006 4:25 PM