How to secure a wireless home network

Setup Your Computers (Windows XP)

Finally, after you make all these changes you'll need to setup your computers that use the wireless network so that they'll be able to connect it.

Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double click on the Network Connections icon. On the left hand side under Network Tasks click on the link for "Set up a wireless network for home or small office". Click Next and then when it asks What do you want to do, select "set up a new wireless network". (Note: Depending on your windows installation the steps to start the network wizard may differ somewhat.)

It will ask you for the wireless network name (SSID), so type in the name of your network that you wrote down. Make sure to choose the "Manually assign a network key" option and click next.

It will now ask you for the WEP key that you wrote down earlier when you enabled the encryption. You'll have to enter it twice to confirm the entry and then click Next.

If it asks "How do you want to set up your network?" select set up network manually, then click Next. Then click Finish.

Your wireless connection should now be setup. If the network doesn't show up in the list then hit refresh. If it shows as disconnected then select your network and click the Connect button.

If it still will not connect then it is possible that if you setup MAC filtering on the router that you have entered the wrong MAC address in the settings or made a mistake. Check the settings and maybe try disabling the MAC filtering to troubleshoot the problem.

Once you're connected it is suggested that you do not disconnect from the wireless network since you'll have to re-enter the encryption keys all over again.