What do you do? For one, you can change the password and then have
everyone remaining on the network update their PCs and try to remember
the new password. But the ex-employee might sneak a peek at the new password
when he comes back to clean out his desk. Or, that ex-tenant might
have a friend who still lives in the building and is willing to share the new
password. In short, a network that relies only on passwords to keep out
intruders is still vulnerable.
The solution for home networks and small businesses??”any outfit without
the means to install an authentication server typically available only to large
companies??”is to use MAC address filtering.
A MAC (Media Access Control) address is a (more or less) unique ID for each
network adapter on your PC, or??”from the point of view of your router??”a
unique ID for each connection on your network. You can configure your router
to allow only specific MAC addresses to connect to your network, and in so
doing, turn away anyone else whether he or she knows your WPA2 passphrase
or not.
A typical Wireless MAC Filter page is shown in Figure 7-13. Here, turn on
the Permit only PCs listed to access the wireless network option, and then
type or paste the MAC address of your PCs??™ wireless adapters into the
boxes. Click Save Settings when you??™re done.
To get your PC??™s MAC address??”which has nothing to do with Macintosh
computers, by the way??”open the Network and Sharing Center in Control
Panel, and then click the View status link next to the Connection area in the
middle of the window.
Pages:
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523