How to properly secure a home network?

cherrio

Hey All,

Need some advice on how to secure my home network. Want to share broadband, but want to (very) selectively share other resources. Often have people coming over and connecting their laptops to my network, I want them to be able to get online, but not have access to any other devices/computer on the network without explicit permission from me.

Current setup
- Laptop, Windows 7 (wireless)
- Desktop, Windows 7 (wired)
- Xbox (wired)
- Wireless Router

So want to be able to share files/documents between the laptop and desktop, just don't want anyone else have access unless I grant it to them.

Any suggestions? Would a router that supports VLANs be a worthy investment? Any router recommendations?

Cheers

FusionNet

Depending on your budget you could get a managed switch which as you say use VLANS. Set up something like a Netgear smart switch (http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/SmartSwitches.aspx) and set up two networks. The private and the public as it were. Two different IP ranges and lock down the public one. Now this also depends whether you wanna give them wifi or wired access I guess... You could always go for the managed switch with an access point, again depends how many euro you wanna give up..


If you can a think about a budget and repost your max spend Ill get you a rough idea how much the above would cost. My business partner is the security and electronics whiz but as I say if your budget is 50 euro then we would have to think up of something else, where as if you have 300 then thats a different ball game...

witnessmenow

Just password protect the shares?