Home routers are an inexpensive way to protect your home computer from attack

One of the easiest ways that people can protect there home computer from attack costs between $50 US and $100 US.This quick and easy solution is a home router either with or without wireless capabilities.  In these days of network based attacks a home router separates your home computer from the internet with a firewall which is far superior to the one installed with your operating system.  This firewall will stop network traffic before it ever gets your computer.

Installing a router also uses a technology called Network Address Translation (NAT) to mask the actual IP address that your computer is using from the internet.  The router assigns you what is called a private IP address, instead of the public IP address that your Internet Service Provider provides you.  This is just another way that the router can protect you as the attacker can only attack the firewall of the router, and isn’t able to connect to your home computer.

These home routers are very easy to install, usually in just 10-15 minutes.  When you purchase the router it will usually come with a CD or DVD which has some software to assist you in configuring your router.  This will secure the router so that it can’t be accessed with the default username and password.  Be sure to change the default password to something else as the default passwords are well known by the people who may be trying to break into your computer.

If you purchase a router with wireless and don’t need the wireless functionally be sure to disable the wireless functionally.  Most routers will allow you to disable the wireless.  If they don’t, be sure to secure the wireless using WEP or WPA encryption.  WPA is a much stronger technology and should be used if it is available.  Leaving the wireless unsecured will allow anyone driving by to access your wireless network and access your computer (if it is turned on) or access the internet using your internet connection which could lead to any accusations which should be against them to being levied against you.  (And no you can’t leave your wireless unsecured and doing this you shouldn’t be and use the WiFi wasn’t protected excuse.  That was already tried in court in the US and the judge rejected that argument.)

That said, if you can afford the computer and the internet connection, you can afford the router.  So go buy one already.

Denny