[dba-Tech] OT: Wireless network (sort of)

I ordered a Netgear MR814v2 Wireless router a couple of weeks ago.  I needed
to expand my 4 port router (I had 5 things I kept needing to plug in) and
the Netgear was on sale at www.Newegg.com at the time.  I then tried and
failed to install a linksys WPC11v2.5 I had laying around, so I ordered a
dlink dwl-650 that was on sale (rebate) at www.newegg.com.  Long story
short, it didn't work.  Long story a little longer, a very long call to
dlink tech support, did not solve the problem.

Or maaaaaybe it did.  After failing to figure anything out, they recommended
that I upgrade my laptop bios.  It's an ancient (now) 233mhz PII Toshiba
Satellite 4000 that I bought with my first paycheck from my trip to work for
Mr. Breen in Dublin Ireland back in hmmm..... November 1997?  Getting a bit
long in the tooth, truth be told.

The bios upgrade and also the old "turn off NAV before installing etc.  And
"oh by the way, our card requires at least a 300 mhz processor.  So I
uninstalled, upgraded to the latest bios (May 2000?), turned off NAV,
reinstalled the drivers and re-installed the card.  Still no joy.  The site
survey showed no transmitters, and dlink tech support assured me that if
there was a transmitter I would see it regardless.

Ignorant liars!

Went back in and reconfigured the card in the laptop for channel 11 (it
defaulted to 3 and the router was on 11), played around with a couple of
other things and boom, I see a transmitter.  Went in to the router config
page and changed the SSID and sure enough the thing I'm seeing on the laptop
changes to match!  Still no connection though.

Rebooted, played around some more and suddenly (no clear idea why) I have a
wireless connection, can browse my network and see the web.  Yeaaaaa.

Moral of the story, tech support generally sucks, play around, don't quit,
and eventually the gods will reward you.  Or not.

Now, I need to know what to do to tighten this thing up so that others can't
see my network.  I'm a bit afraid to touch anything since I don't really
know what I did to finally get it running.

Can anyone walk me through tightening this up?

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com