Routers are an ideal way of managing internet access and bandwidth in households with multiple computers. They also add an extra physical barrier to intrusion over the internet too.

The most popular home router is the Linksys WRT54GS. It has been on the market for a number of years and has improved steadily. The installed firmware is efficient and pretty robust making it an ideal starter router for the budding amateur. As well as the standard firmware, there are third party, Unix based firmware which add considerably to the features of this innocuous blue box.

The router will work straight out of the box with the default configuration but none of the security features work. It will be our job to enable them straight away in order to secure your home network as much as possible.

The installation order should be, internet to modem, modem to input socket of router via network cable. The computers then connect to the four network ports on the back. Configuration is pretty straightforward, via a web interface. Access it by putting http://192.168.1.1 into your browser. The default username and password is admin.

The first screen in the overview of the network settings. We don’t need to change anything here to get things moving, as long as there is an IP address found it’s all good. If you have a wireless connection, choose the wireless tab next. If you don’t, disable the wireless and skip the next section. Just remember when you make any changes on a particular page to save them before moving on. Each will need to be saved individually or the changes will be lost.

The wireless settings are pretty straightforward, change the Wireless Network Name or SSID to something you recognize. Then set the wireless channel, ensuring you also set any devices you want to connect to with the same channel. Next comes Wireless Security where we will lock down the network. Set the Security Mode to WPA2 if your devices support it and set the Encryption to 128 bit. You can either generate a passphrase, or provide your own. Whatever you do, remember it as you will also need to add this to the wireless devices you want to use the network.

The most important of these changes is to enable the firewall. Choose the Security, then the Firewall tab and enable all of the options. Next we change the default username and password. Select the Administration tab and set it to something complicated but memorable, then disable remote management.

By following these simple steps, a user of any skill level can quickly secure their network from attack. The router can do so much more, but you are now safe enough to explore all the options you have. Despite having a hardware firewall on the router, ensure that each device connecting to the network also has a software one too, you can’t be too careful!