Secure Your Home Network: Utilize these 4 Features in Your Router
Introduction:
Most of the people don’t utilise the full functionality of their home network routers, although the defaults and basic settings of home routers can be enough for normal usage, the advance features that come built-in with the home router can significantly increase your network performance and security, because remember it’s not always about the internet speed of your internet service provider, in this article, I will discuss the usage of several features in your WiFi Router that can boost your connectivity.
1) Guest Network:
Guest network is a separate wireless network that runs alongside your main wireless network, the devices connected to this network can only reach the internet and cannot reach other devices on your main network
Benefits:
The main benefit from enabling your guest network is adding an extra layer of security to your home network, ultimately, having all the untrusted devices connected as separate network and not on your main home network.
Here is a diagram showing how guest network fits your Home Network:
2) Access Control:
Most of the Routers, from small home routers to large network routers ( Edge routers, Core Routers,…) support some kind of access control, therefor, it’s most likely that your home WiFi router has this feature.
This feature allows you to block devices from connecting to your Home Router.
How does it work:
You will choose whether you want to make a list with the allowed devices or the blocked devices.
- If you choose allowed devices ( Whitelist ): then the default action will be denying any device unless you add it in the Whitelist, therefore allowing the device on the network.
- If you choose blocked devices ( Blacklist ): then the default action will be allowing any devices unless you add it in the blacklist, therefore blocking the device from the network.
You can add the device to either of these lists by providing the device name and the MAC Address.
3) Parental Control:
This feature in your Router enables you to get insights about each device on your network and take actions against these devices.
The Insights:
- What Website each device is visiting.
- How much time spent on each website.
- How much time spent online for each device
The Actions:
- Set a daily time limit for each device.
- Set time when a device cannot access the internet ( like bedtime ).
- Deny access to specific websites for each device.
- Disable internet access for a device
4) Quality of Services ( QoS ):
In some Routers it’s called “Bandwidth Control”, This feature allows you to take control over your internet bandwidth, you can prioritise and maximise the bandwidth for any device or any service.
For example, maximising the bandwidth for Whatsapp video Calls and prioritising it over YouTube Video.
How does this work?
First, you need to specify the maximum Download and Upload Bandwidth, ( always make it the same as your internet speed), then add Rules to control the Bandwidth.
For Each Rule, you need to provide the following Information:
- IP Range: which IP Addresses will be affected by this rule.
- Port Range: which service or application will be affected ( for example: https is 443 )
- Priority: 1 is the highest
- Download Bandwidth: Minimum to Maximum Range will be Given from the Main Download Bandwidth
- Upload Bandwidth: Minimum to Maximum Range will be Given from the Main Upload Bandwidth
For more information about Quality of Services, check this out The Beginners guide To QoS On your router
Conclusion:
In this article, I have discussed several ways to take control over your network access and security, and being able to secure your Home Internet, although we had an overview, but now you are now aware of some features that could be helpful to you, whether you are a tech enthusiast, Working-From-Home guy, or a parent who wants to control his kids access to internet and safeguard them from oceanwide threats on the internet.
If you would like to know more about setting up your Home Network, Check out Home Network Setup Guide