Is it ok to leave the Internet wireless Router on

[wdwfan16]

We have all of our valuable electronics on surge protectors. The electronics can be hit even if they are turned off. Years ago our phone jack on our protector blew but the modem was safe.

You can leave them on if they are protected but we always turn ours off at night. They will be off for most of the day during the week. It saves on electricity. When we started to so this we saw a decrease in our electric bill. We keep the DVR off the turn off power switch.

 

[bonoriffic]

[*]Go to this site and use at least the first 20 characters of the middle box (63 random printable ASCII characters)[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif,MS Sans Serif] as you pre-shared key.[/FONT]

This last step is probably over kill for most people. The general rule for people should be to use a password or pass phrase that is not obvious (birthdays, last names, etc.) and contains at least 2 special characters (upper case letter, number, $, %, _, etc.). Adding those steps with WPA2 makes it essentially hack proof as the time and effort required to break an 8 character password compared to 63 random characters is insignificant given the pay off. (You should never use WEP as that can be hacked in seconds)

Basically there is no way whatever data you are sending over your wireless network is worth a month of dedicated brute force time to hack it. Adding the 63 character password just puts inconvenience on you for no gain because if nobody was going to waste a month why would they waste 2 years to crack 63 characters? Unless you are a business, pick a password that you can live with.

 

[Imzadi]

People can probably call up Customer service of their Internet provider, especially if they supplied you with the router box. I called up Verizon when I first got the service and also a year later when I had problems. Both times they walked me though securing and passwording my connection.


What I'd like to know is how to hide my connection. Someone here once said that was possible so hackers can't even see there is a connection here.

When I refresh my Network Connections, I can see about 5-7 other connections in my area, even the secured ones. I assume they can see me on their list. I'm concerned there may be hackers in my area trying to hack into my connection while I'm shopping online or checking my online back account.

 

[Barbossa]

Note that WEP is considered an inferior encryption standard, I would highly recommend using WPA.

Another way to add security is to turn on "MAC Address Filtering". Most wireless routers have this feature. Get the MAC address from each of your computer's wireless interfaces and enter them in the router's MAC Address table. When Filtering is turned on the router will only communicate with computers having MAC addresses entered in this table. All other computers attempting to communicate with your router will be ignored.

 

[bonoriffic]

What I'd like to know is how to hide my connection. Someone here once said that was possible so hackers can't even see there is a connection here.

When I refresh my Network Connections, I can see about 5-7 other connections in my area, even the secured ones. I assume they can see me on their list. I'm concerned there may be hackers in my area trying to hack into my connection while I'm shopping online or checking my online back account.

You can "hide" your wireless connection through an option that may be called something similar to "do not broadcast SSID". It will be an option in your router admin page.

As to someone trying to hack into your connection, as long as you have some form of security enabled, it is highly unlikely you will ever have an issue. Why would someone devote time and effort to hack your connection on the off chance you are actively doing something of financial interest. If you are a CEO of a company, or someone well know to have a lot of money or other financial valuables, maybe someone would devote the time to do it. But more than likely there is an unsecured connection within a minute in any direction that is a much, much, easier target.

Lets put it this way, you actively hand your credit card to waiters who take it and leave. You are a trillion times more likely to have that cause you harm than someone hacking your connection and waiting for you to log onto your bank account. I wouldn't give it another seconds worry.

 

[jsmith]

i use both MAC filters and WPA security. But to answer the OPs question-yes you can leave the router on all the time-i however recommend shutting the computers down when they are not in use.