Help Protect Your Network from Hackers

The Microsoft Wireless Base Station provides network address translation (NAT) and a firewall to help secure your system from hacker attacks over the Internet.

NAT hides the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers on a network from the Internet so that only the base station IP address is visible. Without the IP address, it is more difficult for hackers to access the computers on your network.

The firewall specifies what information can be communicated from the computers on your network to the Internet, and from the Internet to the computers on your network. Like an actual firewall built to prevent fire from spreading between adjoining buildings, computer firewalls help prevent the spread of unauthorized communication between an individual computer or group of networked computers and the Internet.

If you are using the base station as an access point only, NAT and the firewall are disabled. In this case, you should make sure that another device on your network provides a firewall and NAT for your network.

Help Protect Your Network from Unauthorized Access

Because wireless networks use radio signals, it is possible for other wireless network devices outside your immediate area to pick up the signals and either connect to your network or capture the network traffic. To help prevent unauthorized connections or the possibility of eavesdroppers listening in on your network traffic, do the following:

OPlace the base station toward the center of your home. This decreases the strength of the signal outside your home.

OUse media access control (MAC) filtering. You can use MAC filtering to grant or deny users the ability to connect to your network based on the MAC addresses of the adapters they are using. For information about MAC filtering, see Broadband Network Utility Help.

OEnable 128-bit wireless security (WEP) on your network. When you enable WEP, you establish a WEP key that scrambles or “encrypts” the data being transmitted between wireless nodes so that it is decipherable only by computers that have the WEP key. In addition, only users who know the network WEP key can join your network and use your Internet connection. If you did not enable wireless security when you ran the Setup Wizard, you can do so from the Broadband Network Utility for your adapters and from the Base Station Management Tool for your base station. For more information, see Broadband Network Utility Help.

Chapter 5: Network Management 31