When you have a Wireless Router at first you just setup and then never look back again. There are many thing to be done other than a simple setup. It seem that you can tweek your Wireless Router further. It includes Boost Performance, tight Security, and gives access to internal network resources on home or small business Networks. It has more security Features that you might not be using. Depending how old or new your Router is it may offer you more of less security features. You have to regularly upgrade your router Firmware for new improvements. Nearly, about all Wireless Clients can support the highest form of wireless encryption. New Routers vome with WPA2 security on initial setup. While buying for a new router you should check that WPA2 is a security option.
Let's checkout Wireless Router features that you should turn on now.
- MAC Filtering
Every Device that connects to the network has a MAC address assigned to its network adaptor.
To help lock security on a network you should use MAC filtering to deny or provide access to your network. It can be used to prevent specific devices from accessing the network or to allow specific devices to access the network.
The Wireless MAC address Filtering feature allows you to control the wireless station accessing the AP which depends on the station's MAC addresses.
MAC Address - The wireless station's MAC address that you want to apply the filtering rules to.
Status - The status of this entry, either Enabled or Disabled.
Description - A simple description of the wireless station.
Modify - Here you can modify or delete an existing rule.
To disable the Wireless MAC Address Filters feature, keep the default setting, Disable.
2. Channel Width
Consider data being transferred over a wireless signal as vehicles on a highway. The Bigger the highway the more vehicles it can handle. But there are chances of accidents on bigger highway as compared to smaller ones.
Channel Width works in a similar way. By default 2.4 GHz uses a 20 MHz channel width. The Data doesn't move as fast across 20 MHz as it does across the broader 40 or 60 MHz channels, but 20 MHz channel width supports 802.11x devices and has typically has better range than 40 MHz. On many routers the channel width is set as AUTO. If you are a gamer or Stream HD videos then keep channel width to 40MHz as compared to the slower 20MHz channel. First see that your computer or device you are using for streaming videos or for gaming supports 802.11n, the 5GHz band and 40 MHz.Keep in mind by doing this your router will lack some range at this settings.
3. QoS
The speed of your wireless network is extremely temperamental, and can be due to indiscriminate users or applications hogging all the bandwidth. IP QoS (Quality of Service) function, which offers optimum utilization of bandwidth through the use of bandwidth congestion control. This means that users of small networks will enjoy bandwidth allocation specifically for them, preventing non-critical wireless usage from degrading network performance. This feature can increase performance of specific types of network traffic such as streaming videos, gaming. When QOS is enabled, most routers can be set to give highest bandwidth priority to the applications and types of traffic you specify.
4. Advanced Wireless Settings
Most routers have an advanced wireless settings section. These settings should never be changed in most cases, except in rare case in trying to troubleshoot persistent connection issues such slow speeds. These settings manage how data packets are handled on the network. In advanced wireless settings, set the Beacon Interval to 50 (the default is 100), set the Fragmentation Threshold to 2306 (default is 2346), and set the RTS Threshold to 2307 (the default is 2347). Make sure you take note of what the settings were before you change in case anything goes wrong.
5. Network address translation (NAT)
Network address translation (NAT) is remapping one IP address space into another by modifying network address information in Internet Protocol (IP) datagram packet headers while they are in transit across a traffic routing device. Network Address Translation helps improve security by reusing IP addresses. It Enables connecting multiple computers to the Internet using one IP address.
If you have two routers deployed in your network, one performing WAN-LAN routing and the other serving as a bridge, you want to ensure that only the router that's connected to the actual WAN connection serving as a router if the only device performing NAT. A second router serving as a bridge should be in bridge mode with NAT disabled. Double-NAT can cause packet collision and bottle-necks in a network, blocking on performance.
6. Backup and Restore
The Backup and Restore configuration feature in a router allows end users to backup all configurations made to the router. The Router is capable of taking backup of all your configurations and saves them into a file. This Feature is useful when you reset your router and you forgot the configuration settings. At this time when you restore the config file all the settings are restored and you don't have to bother or call a technician to fix it.
7. DDNS
It is a method of automatically updating a name server in the Domain Name System (DNS), often in real time, with the active DNS configuration of its configured hostnames, addresses or other information. DDNS is useful when you want to access your network remotely.
DDNS is a service that maps Internet domain names to IP addresses. DDNS serves a similar, but not quite the same, purpose to DNS. Just go to the provider's site and setup an account and then you can configure DNS within the router interface.
