The vast majority of wireless routers ship with factory default settings that include a known SSID. For that reason, anyone in your local area who happens to have purchased and set up the same router make and model will have the same settings (if they retain the default settings). Anyone looking for a free Internet ride can also search very easily for known product default SSIDs. An SSID is probably best thought of as the name of your network. All PCs connected to the network use that name. SSID stands for Service Set Identifier and it is a 32 bit character that is attached to the header of any packet sent over that network. That is how you can search for the network when you first set it up. If you already have a wireless network set up and you have come to read this article to secure it, you will need to change the SSID of your router via its configuration utility and also re-configure each computer on your network after that change has been made. Here's how .... Once you have logged in to the wireless configuration utility (explained on the previous page) look for the SSID and simply change it. For my router, the setting was under the Wireless tab. The default was a highly obvious belkin54g (the make and model number of the product!). I changed it to, ahem, well, never you mind! Now not to be paranoid, but whilst your going to the trouble of changing your SSID you might as well use something that isn't easy for someone local to guess such as any obvious combination of your name, street name or house number. 
Somewhere right near where you can change the SSID in your router's web based configuration utility will also be the option to either broadcast your SSID (which will be enabled by default) or to not broadcast your SSID. If you change this to not broadcast any SSID it will mean that if anyone in the local area, including yourself, searches for wireless networks, your network name will not show up. Only a search for your actual exact SSID would show any result. For my product, changing this setting was a matter of unticking the Broadcast SSID check box and then Apply Changes. Now don't forget that if you make this change on an existing network, you've just killed that network since all of the PCs connected to it were looking for the belkin54g name and now it's gone! So you must change the configuration of all connected PCs as well. To do that, go to Start > My Network PlacesControl Panel > View Network Connections. 
Right click on Wireless Network Connection (shown above) and select properties. 
Under the Wireless Networks tab you will see your wireless network listed under Available networks ("Broadcom" in the example above). Click on it to highlight it and click the Configure button on the right. 
At the top is the Network name (SSID). Change it to the new SSID you set in the router settings and click OK. You will need to do this for EVERY computer on the network. |