How do I give my laptop first priority for WiFi access over other devices in my home?
You can get close to this if you set up an extra WiFi network either using the second band of a dual band router or adding a wireless access point to your router to provide the extra network. With its own SSID and pass phrase, the extra network can be for the sole use of your laptop.I said “close to”, because what this gives you is all the other devices except the laptop sharing one network and its bandwidth one packet at a time. Your private network will have equal priority, but with just the laptop using it.If you have (say) your laptop and five other devices using the Internet, then your laptop will be eligible for 50% of the Internet bandwidth, and each of the other devices could get 10%. Increase it to your laptop and ten other devices, then you still get 50%, but the other devices only get 5% each.This is a crude description. It is unlikely that all devices will need their full share of whatever bandwidth is involved, and it also assumes that the resource you are all sharing is the limiting factor.This sort of set up should help with online gaming as your laptop will not be queuing with other devices to use its own private WiFi network. This should very significantly reduce ping (lag) spikes that some games simply cannot tolerate.
How do assign a different IP address to a computer on my wireless network in order to avoid conflicts.?
There are multiple ways to assign a different IP to a system, but it would depend on the operating system you are using. Ideally, if you are using a wireless router, you would have everything set to DHCP, and adjust the scope of the DHCP range to assign a limited number of IP addresses. For instance, you could use the following configuration: IP of wireless router: 192.168.1.1 DHCP range: 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.120 Use subnet mask 255.255.255.0 to use all IP addresses within the 192.168.1 subnet If you need to statically assign an IP address, you could use an IP address outside of the 100-120 range (192.168.1.99 or 192.168.1.150 for examples) which would allow the wireless devices to have an assigned IP address by the wireless adapter, and devices you may want to ensure have a static IP (like a network printer) have an IP address outside of the DHCP range to ensure there is no conflict. If you are configuring a printer which has network functionality, you may want to refer to the manufacturer documentation for assigning the IP address manually, as instructions may vary. For most windows operating systems, open the Network/Network Connections Control Panel. Right-click on your network adapter and choose properties. Locate the "TCP/IP or Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" listing and click the Properties button. Select the "Use the following IP address" and enter your IP information. Click OK and your system will be using the new IP address. For many MAC systems, open the Network Preferences and there is an option to manually configure your IP address. A word of caution, the problem with hard coding wireless devices especially, if you attempt to connect to a different wireless network, your connectivity may not work especially if their network settings differ from yours; resulting in either you constantly having to change/re-configure your own settings or just not using your wireless connection when you aren't within your own network.
I have a wireless router in 1 corner of my house and want to increase my signal. The router cannot be moved.?
there are a couple of things you can do, use a WAP (Wireless Access Point) or a powerline. WAP is basically a second router, it takes the signal from the first and boosts it across a further distance, basically extends the range by simply repeating the signal. Not too expensive A Powerline is a device that plugs into your electric wall sockets, you send a signal from the router to one of these devices (usually by LAN cable) and in another plug socket on the same circuit you put another device and the cabling in the wall is used to transmit the signal. You can get wireless versions of these so they are a sort of WAP or you connect directly by LAN cable, or if more than 1 cabled connection is required you can connect a hub or switch.
What is the difference between setting your DNS choice on your Windows compare to setting it on your router?
A nice and simple question. :)When you set DNS on your computer, you manually override the DNS servers provided by the DHCP server in your router.When you manually set DNS servers on your router, you manually override DNS servers provided to the router by the DHCP server at your ISP.When your computer connects to your router, it usually gets configured by DHCP. That means the computer tells the router "Here I am at ________ MAC address, tell me my IP address, my netmask, my default gateway, and my DNS server". The router acts as the DHCP server.You can also manually setup your IP address, which means you would override the settings provided to you by the router's DHCP server. You would manually set the IP address, the netmask, and the default gateway.At this point it is still possible to accept the DNS servers configured by your router's DHCP server or you can also choose to set them manually.Similarly, you can configure your computer to configure its IP, netmask, and default gateway by DHCP but override the DNS servers manually.Now that you understand how the whole process works, here is what would happen.You can set Google's DNS 8.8.8.8 in your router settings and now all computers on that network will automatically use that DNS server.You can set Google's DNS 8.8.8.8 on your computer only and now only your computer will use Google's DNS while the rest of your devices will use whatever DNS servers are configured in your routerIf you let the router get its DNS servers configured by the ISP's DHCP server, which is the default, the router will configure your network to use the ISP's DNS servers. In case of AT&T, it is definitely not advisable. I've seen AT&T and Comcast DNS go down more than once.Configuring redundant DNS, such as 8.8.8.8 (Google) and 4.2.2.4 (Verizon) means the system will try to resolve the query via Google first. If it fails, it will NOT try to resolve it through Verizon. If Google's DNS server is unreachable (more likely to be filtered than down), the system will try to reach the Verizon DNS server. Under normal operations, the system will never query the secondary DNS server. Note: this is for Windows. Other operating systems might behave differently.Configure Google's DNS 8.8.8.8 in your router's DNS settings and that will set it that way for every computer on the network served by that router.
How can I kick off other devices off my wifi?
Everyone is suggesting to use MAC filtering feature provided by Access Point/WiFi Router. However, MAC spoofing (i.e. changing the MAC address of device) is not that difficult in most of the scenarios. If the guy does that then your MAC filtering access control will fail miserably.One thing I am not able to understand is why the hell you are not relying on Encrypted WiFi (WPA/WPA2) for that? Means you are blocking him from using the internet. So, obviously you don't want the other guy to use your network. In that case, why not just change the damn password and restart the router? The guy's devices will get disconnected and not be able to reconnect.If by some means he is able to get your password again despite changing it then you have a whole new set of problems to worry about (ranging from how the hell he know what is my doggy's favorite snack? to why the hell he is doing so much effort for just free internet? Assuming he is able to guess/break both personal as well as random passwords).BTW there are even ways to kick someone from his own network without knowing his WiFi password (Read about spoofed Deauthentication packets) but that is obviously not required here. :pIf you think I am missing something then please let me know in comments. I will change my answer accordingly if needed. :)Upvote if you like the answer and follow me for more answers related to WiFi security, Cryptography, IoT security and Cyber Forensics.
How to give internet access to a private net?
If you must install 125 computers for a new business that wants to run TCP/IP and have access to the Internet. The ISP in town will assign you only four public IP addresses, so you decide to assign the computers addresses in the range 172.16.1.1/16 through 172.16.1.125/16. What else must you do to allow these computers to access the Internet? thxs,
My Macbook won't connect to my wireless internet. How do I fix this?
I have a Netgear router (54 Mbps Wireless Router WGR614 v7) and a Macbook (Mac OS X Version 10.5.7 processor: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo). The Airport signal says that there is full signal, but if I try to go onto Safari or Firefox, neither will connect to the network. I was searching around and found somewhere that someone was talking about self assigned IP addresses. Under the Network preferences it says that "Airport has a self-assigned IP address and may not be able to connect to the Internet." Unfortunately I don't speak computer, so I have no idea what to do about that or what that even means. If I plug the macbook directly into the wall wit the ethernet cable, it still doesn't work, but the connection is fine on my windows XP. I don't know what other details I could give, but this is really frustrating me and I need a solution. I appreciate any help anyone can give me.