Can I make kids pc only get my Wifi and not neighbors?

I have a Linksys wireless G router and my kids have Linksys wireless USB adapters. They always pick up my neighbor's signal instead of mine. I want to be able to shut off their web access when I am not home or when they've been on long enough, but they can just surf with my neighbor's signal. Is there any way I can configure their PC's to only accept my broadcast? Or is there a program I can use to accomplish this?

Yes, I could just tell the neighbor to lock down his signal but honestly I don't know which neighbor it is and there are a lot of houses around me. Plus he probably won't know how to configure it anyway.

Thanks!

Reply to
Aaron
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I would think your neigbor, would like to know that teenagers are using his unsecured network..... before he gets a supoena from the RIAA, rather than afterward.

Ed

Reply to
Ed

If you are using winXP, you could config the wireless network to not automatically connect to an any wifi access point, but to connect only to a particular ESSID. If you are not using WEP, use it.

You would need to set this up in administrator account and not let the kids reconfig it. But you should assume they would find a way around it, if they are teenagers.

If you use a directional antenna with a laptop, you can probably pinpoint where the open wifi signal is coming from. Or just walk around and home in where the signal is strongest.

-peter

Reply to
peter

Would it be possible to set your home network up on an uncommonly used private IP address scheme, such as, oh, say, 10.0.14.168 subnet mask

255.255.255.248? (download a free copy of Solarwinds advanced subnet calculator to get others). This would give your network address ranges from 10.0.14.169 to 10.0.14.174. After configging your G router in this address block, disabling DHCP server on the router, you could go into your password protected admin account on the kids PC's and hard-set their IP addresses to ones within that block. I think, and I may be wrong here, that if they still saw the neighbor's networks, they would very unlikely be able to hook up to them because their PC's would not be able to get a DHCP address from the neighbor Access Point because the kids are hard-set to only your network's address scheme.

If I'm way off on this, somebody let me know. I have not tried this but as long as the kids PCs are within the address parameters of the address and subnet, and the router IP address (usually the first useable in the subnet--in the above case 10.0.14.169) is set as default gateway on the kids PCs, you should have a workable network and I THINK the kids would be unable to surf a random network, as they would be restricted to only their hard-set subnet. The key thing would be to disallow the kids access to the admin account and any ability to set their PC back to DHCP.

Another thing you could do is, if the wireless hardware's software setting allows, restrict the kids PC's USB adaptors to G only--this might cut down some connection possibilities if the neighbors are on B only. They could change this easily though if they figured it out.

Reply to
Bob Schmidt

How would I do this? Thanks!

Reply to
Aaron

"Aaron" snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMhotmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

Your kids will eventually defeat that. You need to talk to your kids about not taking advantage of the situation.

Duane :)

Reply to
Duane Arnold

Double-click on the wireless network icon in the taskbar, select "view wireless networks", then select "change order of referred networks" from the menu on the right. Delete your neighbour's networks from the list.

Your machine will now automatically connect to your wlan by preference. The neighbour's wlan will still show up in the list of possible networks, but your machine will automatically connect to yours first.

I've not tried it, but if you do this using an admin acct, and ensure your kids use only restricted accounts, they should not be able to change it back easily.

Of course, they could still manually connect to the neighbour's network. The only fix ofr that is to get your neighbour to put security in place.

Reply to
Mark McIntyre

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