Protecting a wireless internet connection

[freak_unique]

I have Telewest broadband and purchased my own Belkin Wireless router so that we could route 3 computers in the same house wirelessly. When i got the router (back in Sept) the software would always mess up (its even been exchanged) so i duno if maybe it doesnt agree with any of our pcs i dunno. Anyways so we had to just have our internet connection unprotected (the router is just plugged into the modem)and we dont have any of the pcs wired to the router as a main pc. I was wondering does anyone know if i can download anything to protect the internet connection so that just the 3 of us can use it? Or any other ways of doing this? Thanks in advance :)

[vehelpfulguy]

Some help (I just searched in Google for "Protecting Wireless Networks")

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22122005/373/protect- wireless-network.html

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/netwo rking/security/wireless.mspx

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=9988/byt115297 8314561/060715a.htm

[freak_unique]

Hey cheers for that mate il have a good look at those sites!!! :D

[fo3nix]

You need to use WPA encryption. It's nothing to do with Windows or securing that, you just need encryption.

[Kerplunk]

Or MAC address filtering will do the trick also.

[fo3nix]

MAC address filtering will prevent others being able to leach from your connection, but they'll still be able to read the packets you send and read all the websites you visit, all your IM conversations, etc.

[Kerplunk]

I interpretted, " I was wondering does anyone know if i can download anything to protect the internet connection so that just the 3 of us can use it? " , as you wanted to protect your internet connection from outside use. To protect your entire network, including all data passing to and from it then you need to do as the others say and use some form of encryption.