Everyday Tech Tips, This weeks Tuesday’s Tech Tips departs from my usual business orientation to focus on one of my favorite, personal technology topics: home and entertainment systems!
Today, you can wire and add wireless network connectivity to everything from your air conditioner, appliances and home alarm to gaming, entertainment systems, and tablets. The convenience of going high-tech at home can be an amazing convenience, but it’s not without its challenges.
You have many different options on how you set up your network configuration. You might choose to limit access to certain devices based on the user (different settings for mom and dad or each child), the time of the day, or even set time ranges when each device may be used. Let’s say you have kids who need to use a tablet or laptop for school homework each weekday. You can set up a standard time range internet access will work for each device: Monday through Thursday from 3pm-8pm for example. That way, you can be assured your kids are not up until 1am playing video games on school nights! You can also set internet content filters to limit which sites your children can access. Best of all, these features can be customized for each device and password protected so only you can change them.
When dealing with electronics like blu-ray players, and gaming systems, it is suggested to set them up on zones within your home so you can track traffic and usability. You’ll want to make sure you set up a customized password for each device (don’t rely on the default password that came set up with each device.) Taking the time to learn your system or work with your provider to make custom changes will greatly increase your level of protection and security.
I also encourage the use of MAC hardware security along with the standard password. Each device has a unique hardware number (IP) and most wireless devices allow you to turn on a feature that requires you to authorize the device to use your network. This way, devices will not automatically connect even if the person trying to connect knows the device password. This simple step will add a great deal more security to your home network and limit misuse by unwelcome guests. If you are tired of telling your kids to put down their phone or iPads when you are having dinner, the auto setting will solve the problem for you. Internet access will just stop working at a set time and start to work again only when you schedule it.
Small fixes, and great piece of mind.