Grant Access Only to Your Computers and Devices
Every computer or device that can connect to a wired or wireless network has a serial number, called a MAC (or physical) address. Devices use this address to identify themselves on the network. Thus the router can deny/approve access to your network by the addresses of devices that try to connect, known as MAC address filtering. Wi-Fi hackers can spoof the MAC addresses of their wireless adapters; however, this can be another layer of security. You just never want to rely solely on this to secure your network. If you want to give it a try, you can input a list of your device addresses into the MAC address filtering page of the router’s web-based configuration utility. Just remember, if you get a new device, or a friend brings a laptop over, you must input their address on the list, too.