What if My Router Isn't a Dual-Band?

As you can see, getting a guest network up and running is easy if you have a router that supports dual bands. If not, you can do this with virtually any spare router that you connect to your existing wired or wireless network for this purpose.

Apple's AirPort Extreme Base Station is an investment at $179, but it'll last a good long while, and it's incredibly easy to administer from a Mac.

Refer to your specific router’s documentation for port blocking to block all ports except port 80 (used for accessing HTTP content) and port 443 (used for accessing HTTPS content). This will limit that router’s internet access to only web traffic. You can then unblock additional ports as necessary for different services, such as POP (110) or IMAP (143), which will allow email. Commonly used port numbers can be found at support.apple.com/kb/TS1629. By blocking/unblocking these port numbers, you’re restricting/allowing access to the people that connect to the guest network.

Port blocking is easy to do, but just the name may scare some. If you are in the market for a new router and wish to have guest networking without a mess of cabling or having to deal with blocking and opening ports, you may want to consider getting a dual-band router. Some can be pricy, but the AirPort Extreme ($179, apple.com) and Netgear routers (netgear.com) usually last a long time.

Wireless Security: Which Should I Choose?

When putting together a wireless network, the most important piece of the puzzle is the wireless security. Unless you live in an extremely remote area, you need to enable some type of encryption. Most modern routers come with at least two types of encryption: WEP and WPA. While both do a good job, they were not created equal.

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was one of the first styles of wireless encryption brought about and is inherently insecure--several tools are available online that allow anyone to hack into a WEP-encrypted Wi-Fi network.

WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) is a more modern and more secure way of encrypting your wireless network. A newer standard of WPA, called WPA2, increases the security by adding additional behind-the-scenes features. WPA also has the advantage of letting you specify your own passphrase instead of using hard-to-remember hexadecimal values. So yes, use WPA2 whenever possible.