Spitfire66

Hi Mitch - depending on what wlan router you have, you should be able to look at connected devices which would show you if someone else is connected to your lan / router.
I would however strongly reccomend you do the following to help make your network secure.
1. Enacle 128 bit WEP security - this is simple to do (WEP keys can however be cracked - I managed to sniff my own key at home in just over an hour despite 128 bit encryption).
2. Enable MAC address filtering (also tie the MAC addresses to machine names if possible on your router).
3. Reduce / change IP range - free up only the amount of IP addresses you need (i.e if you only have 1 PC - free up only one address) - also creating your own range (instead iof a standard home network range of 195.168.x.x) may enhance security.
4. Potentially build 2 VLANS (1 internal & 1 external) with a trust between them.
5. Get hold of an intrusion detection tool (usually expensive & hard to set-up).
6. SWITCH OFF ROUTER WHEN NOT IN USE!
7. Block all incoming ports & de-activate remote management.
8. Change default P/W on router (use special characters)

Hope this helps (feel free to Pm with add. qns)

Rgds

Tom

Spitfire66

Oh - and disable the broadcast of your SSID (also change SSID from its default).....

a nice little tool for monitoring WLAN networks is netstumbler
www.netstumbler.org

also if you want to get into WLAN security & wardriving there is a nice warlinux cd (bootable) at www.remote-exploit.org/ which has just about every nice / nasty network tool available (the cd image is free).

mitchthephoneman

thanks for the tips.......i never meet a punch tool expert with such good knowledge about routers........LOL......Mitch

Spitfire66

lol - fair comment