How to disable service set identifier (SSID) broadcasting on your wireless router
Posted on August 31, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Make sure to read other posts from the Wireless Tips series!
- How to connect two computers or laptops wirelessly
- How to wirelessly access USB devices using a network USB hub
- How to disable service set identifier (SSID) broadcasting on your wireless router
- How to troubleshoot your Windows XP wireless network connection problems
- Wireless Tips – Does your wireless router keep disconnecting or dropping the connection?
Usually when you buy a wireless router and plug it in, there is absolutely no security protection whatsoever. Most of them work right out of the box, but have no administrator or only the default password set, do not encrypt data, do not use a network key, and broadcast the SSID publicly. If you’ve found this article, you’re probably trying to figure out how to make your wireless network more secure.
One great way that I’m going to talk about in this guide is disabling the SSID broadcast for your wireless router. The SSID is actually the name of the wireless network, which by default is usually the name of the networking company, such as Netgear, LinkSys, or D-Link. By turning off the broadcast, the name of the network will not show up on the Windows or Mac list of available networks. This method of security by no means will prevent a hacker from getting into your network, but it’s still better than doing nothing at all.
Actually, this is really only useful for those people who live in apartments, condos, dorms, etc where other people live very close by and can pick up your signal and use your bandwidth to browse the net. A good hacker has many tools that can detect wireless networks even if the SSID broadcast is disabled!
Unfortunately, each brand of router has the disable SSID under different menus! I’ll go ahead and try to give directions for each of the major brands since that’ll take care of 99% of the wireless users. In order to do this, you’ll have to logon to your router to configure it. You can get the IP address of the router by going to Start, choosing Run, typing cmd, clicking OK and then typing in ipconfig at the command prompt.
The router IP address is your Default Gateway, in my case, 10.0.1.10. Go ahead and open IE and type that number with dots into the address bar. You can find the login information with the instructions that came with the router or on the back or bottom of the router.
D-Link Routers
For D-link routers you’re going to click on Wireless and then click on the Home tab. You’ll see the first option is called Wireless Raido, select the Off radio button.
LinkSys Routers
It seems to be pretty much the same for LinkSys routers, usually click on Wireless and then select Basic Wireless Settings and select the Disable radio button.
Netgear Routers
For Netgear, you need to login and click on Wireless under the Setup heading in the left menu. At the bottom you’ll see a checkbox named “SSID Broadcast Enable”. Uncheck it to disable broadcasting.
If you have another brand of wireless router, try to click through some of the menus and you’ll find it pretty easily usually.
Have any questions? Post a comment! Thanks!
[tags]disable ssid, disable service set identifier, wireless router, ssid broadcasting[/tags]
» Filed Under Computer Tips
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Comments
9 Responses to “How to disable service set identifier (SSID) broadcasting on your wireless router”
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How to find a wireless access point IP address Says:
[...] via a wired Ethernet port, however, you know there is a wireless connection in the library, but SSID broadcast is turned off for security reasons. It’s basically an easy way to prevent people from connection to your wireless [...]
October 11th, 2009 at 5:25 am
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Disable SSID Broadcast for Airport Express, Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule Wireless Routers Says:
[...] screenshots and additional details, see our previous post on disabling SSID broadcast on non-Apple [...]
April 28th, 2010 at 5:06 am
this is very useful and straight forward.i like it.thank you.but how can you limit the access to a particular area only such as a living room.
Well this might be a good idea but sometimes when you disable a SSID the computer can’t connect even if you know the SSID. I prefer to keep the SSID on while securing the router the regular way using encryption, also you can limit the router connection to registered MAC addresses only.
i think the D-Link directions are incorrect. if you turn off the radio, you are turning off all signaling and will result in making it simply a router without wireless functionality.
My D-Link says not to turn off SSID Broadcasting to maintain DHCP compatibility. Now what to do!
Note that turning off SSID broadcasting will make it impossible for most devices to connect to your wireless network like printers, game consoles, etc.
However, if they are plugged in directly to the wireless router, they should work fine. And DHCP should have nothing to do with SSID broadcasting.
Hi, I have disabled the SSID because someone got onto my connection and downloaded 4.8Gig in 24 hours but now I have the problem that if I manually disconnect the connection I cant find it to reconnect !! can you help. Cheers my system is a windows xp 2002 professional. cheers
I need to have the capability to turn the broadcasting of my wireless router off and on during various periods of the day, withoug screwing up the network. Will this process accomplish that?