We’ve all heard stories of people “borrowing” a neighbors internet connection or passers by stopping suspiciously in the street, smart-phone in hand.

Internet connection theft is rife in the UK, and if you choose to leave your WiFi connection un-protected then you’re leaving yourself open to a world of hurt.

Not only are you leaving your Internet connection open to every man and his dog, but you could potentially be giving access to resources on your home network, such as shared folders on your PC, printers and network drives.

There have even been a few high profile cases, including this one, where illegal activity has occurred where the bad guys have used a neighbors Internet connection for criminal purposes.  At the end of the day, forensics and examination of your computers should be enough to absolve you of any guilt, but it wouldn’t be a nice experience at all.

So how to protect your home network from outsiders?  There are a few options, all with varying levels of success and their own considerations, find out more below:

Use a Wireless Password

Most home routers will come with a wireless password already set, but if they don’t then it’s important that you set one up.  To do this you’ll need to access your routers configuration page via your web browser.  To get the web address for your router you’ll need to check with your ISP (if they provided it) or check the user manual or this list if you bought it yourself.

There are a few different types of encryption available on home routers, but the main three are WEP (Wired Equivalent Protection), WPA-TKIP and WPA2-AES.  The weakest of these is WEP, the strongest is WPA2-AES.  All three can be broken with time, but not normally by opportunistic passers by or neighbors.  Still, it’s best to go with the strongest of the three (WPA2-AES) in order to offer the best level of wireless protection.

DON’T Use Homeplug adapters.

Homeplug adapters are a great way to get network connectivity in areas where wireless coverage can be difficult.  You plug an adapter into an ordinary mains socket at either end and then connect a network cable at either end.  The network signal is then transmitted over the mains cabling between devices.

The network signal should stop at your fuse board, but there have been proven cases where Homeplug signals have been picked up further afield, especially in blocks of flats where cables run close together or have shared fused boards etc.

The manufacturers of these devices are quick to point out that they provide encryption, but this is an application that only works between Windows PC’s.  It doesn’t protect your internet connection or access to other devices (or PC’s running software other than Windows).

At the end of the day, if you can get around using these adapters then you should, although the next two concepts can help you to use Homeplug adapters whilst avoiding the associated problems.

Use Static IP addresses.

99% of home routers will use something called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) which automatically assigns an IP address to all devices on your network.  No matter whether they’re connected wirelessly or via a network cable.  This address is provided every time that a device is connected to the network, automatically and without any interaction from you.  The IP address is important as devices cannot connect to your home network (or the Internet) without one.

The problem is that any device that connects to your network will automatically be assigned an IP address by your home router.  But you can stop this, you can turn off DHCP on your router and then manually set an IP address on your home devices.  This means that they will still be able to connect to your router, and the Internet, but other devices that connect via open WiFi or via Homeplug devices won’t automatically get an IP address.

There’s still a chance that they’ll be able to guess a suitable address, but most people will simply give up when they don’t get allocated an address automatically.

The downside to this is that every device that you want to use on your network will need an address setting manually, which can be an annoyance.  You’ll also have to switch the configuration of laptops etc. back to DHCP if you use them on other networks.

Use MAC Address Filtering.

Every network-able device has something called a MAC address (Media Access Control) which is a unique permanent address that only exists on your device.  One way of securing your network is to only allow a set list of MAC addresses to access your network.

In doing so, only specific devices that you approve will be assigned an IP address via DHCP, and thus only these devices will be able to use your internet connection and other network resources.

This is the strongest way to protect your home network, it gets around the security issues of wireless, DHCP and Homeplug while ensuring that only the devices that you specify will be able to join your home network.

Most routers will support this these days, but you’ll need to check the manual for your particular router to find out the exact way to do it.  you’ll also need to consult the manual for your device in order to find out how to find your device’s MAC address.

Final Thoughts.

There’s nothing to stop you mixing and matching the methods above to secure your network, but by all means do something.  There will always be opportunists who will try and use your connection, but others might not even be aware of it; most smartphones will automatically try and connect to un-protected networks and, once connected, will try and download things like Emails or updates from social networking sites.

At the end of the day, it is your choice as to how you proceed with network security, but with more and more services being offered via the web, now is the time to ensure that you and your family are properly protected.