Your Home Network

Your Home Network As you may already know, when you ordered internet service, a few pieces of networking equipment came with the service if you didn’t have your own equipment. Like the router and modem (sometimes this is just one piece of equipment). I highly recommend you buy your own and if possible not a combination but separate router and modem. There are many brands to choose from. I had good experiences with TP Link and Netgear.
Your installer setup the connection, then it gave you the name of your network, a User ID and password and told you to keep this information safe for future use. He may have connected your computer via a network cable and voilaaa!, you started your browser and in no time at all you were surfing the internet.

Then the installer may have mentioned that you can connect your smartphone to your WiFi and from that point forward it will connect automatically when you are in the house so you can make phone calls or browse the internet all using your own secure network. He may have connected your smart TV to the network and you immediately started streaming your favorite programs, just to test it of course.

After he leaves, your wife mentions that it would be nice to get one of those Ring doorbells now that the internet service is running and maybe a couple of cameras to keep your eye on the front and back of the house.
Perhaps she mentions that maybe you can also connect your garage door so instead of driving back to verify that you did remember to close the garage, you could just look at your phone and see that it is indeed closed. (Don’t laugh, I do that all the time, I forget if I closed it.)

Your wife then says that she will also like one of those Roomba vacuum cleaners so it can clean when you both are out shopping or playing golf. After all, you are both retired and traveling more.
She also has that nice brochure from SimpliSafe that offers a simple do it yourself alarm installation, she already counted the entry points, windows, doors, motion sensors, fire alarms, indoor cameras and glass breaking sensors.
You look at the installation and it’s a breeze, basically peel off the tape and secure it to the entry point, so you agree with her. And one more thing, you can now connect all these new devices to your home network so at any time you can open the app and see your living room while you play poker in Vegas. Ahhh, life is good!

So by now, you may have in excess of 10, 15, 45 or more devices connected to your home network. Life is so much easier than the “olden” days your kids tease you about it.

By now you are totally convinced that technology is the way to go and you decide to pay your utilities, credit cards, etc., via the internet from your phone or computer. You want to prove to your kids that you are smart, they will be so proud so you added a few of the investment accounts to the list. You also have your home and car insurance, your property taxes and your medical all on the internet.
(It’s OK, I have been doing it since 1992 back when CitiBank opened up access to do home banking on the internet. Back then we only had a dialup modem. Talk about slowww connection!)

So as your home network keeps growing, you realize now that you are managing about 50 or more User IDs and their corresponding passwords. You start to worry a bit, how should you manage these many identities? If someone hacks the doorbell or garage door or camera, your whole network would be exposed.

Relax, there is help for your dilemma. Several years back I started to use a Password Manager for work. Corporations needed this a lot more than us casual users with less than 100 passwords. They had many servers, computers, networks, routers, switches, etc., to manage so the quantity kept growing every time they hired a new person, bought new software, opened a new office, bought new vehicles, etc.

At the moment I’m on my second password manager. My new favorite is 1Password. Previously I had used LastPass for work and personal but the one I have now is highly rated and much easier to use. I subscribe to the family plan so my wife can now use it on her favorite devices (iPhone and iPad)

It took a lot of convincing to educate her on why using the name of our pets was not a good idea for the bank accounts. Another bad habit is to use the same password for multiple accounts. Now a days we use something like this: 8acFer1bjx*kleD#,Wipv,>qRg instead of Fluffy123.

The password manager lets you generate a password with any length you choose, to include symbols and numbers or you can limit how many characters or to include or omit symbols or numbers.

1Password has also introduced passkeys instead of passwords, but that is the subject of another conversation.

I strongly advise that you take steps to properly change and safeguard your passwords, starting with the router. One weak password can compromise your entire home network.