Wireless Security

[#1]

:)We are a recent move to plus.net and have been pleased with all aspects of them but have a niggling issue on wireless security.
We have a desktop and two laptops all connected wirelessly and all work well with no issues. However a month back we received the warning that we were close to our usage limit and for the first time became aware and accessed the usage data pages. From this we noted that there was activity in the free night period and whilst on all but two nights this was minimal 50 -70KB on those two nights the usage was c1.5MB. On checking back we found that the likely offender (our 20 year old daughter) was away from home and we hadn't used the internet at all. On contacting plus.net we were advised to strengthen the wireless security and have changed the Network name (SSID) and the WPA-PSK Encryption Key and the WPA-PSK Version is set to WPA+WPA2. Since doing this there have been no large night period uses just the same few KBs which plus.net and Thomsom suggest is probably the modem completing a few checks. We have also turned the modem off at night and obviously nothing then happens and our usage levels in the months since that overrrun have been well within our 10MB limit. However the fear remains that someone is/can access our wirless connection during the day/paid for period. We have tried changing the Allow New Devices to either "New stations are allowed (via registration)" or "New stations are not allowed" but with both all our computers lose the connection and are not allowed access. We have to connect via ethernet cable and reset this section to "New stations are allowed" and access then happens. Further contact with plus.ne t   Thomson (plus.net suggested going to them) have advised that the change to the stations section may not work suggested to uncheck -Allow multicast from Broadband Network but the same disconnection>>cable connection need to change back applies.
Any help/suggestions on whole issue would be appreciated.

jim:orange All caps removed from title as per forum rules mod:end

[#2]

welcome to the Forums and Plusnet. 

The newer Thompson router as supplied by Plusnet uses the button on the front to connect new users, unfortunately, I have the year old router that doesnt use that feature, so stay here for advise

[#3]

Quote

From this we noted that there was activity in the free night period and whilst on all but two nights this was minimal 50 -70KB on those two nights the usage was c1.5MB.

The 50-70k is very typical of normal background traffic between the exchange and router when the connection is idle, even 1.5M is not that uncommon. If someone had hacked into your Wifi the usage would be much greater than that!

Quote

On contacting plus.net we were advised to strengthen the wireless security and have changed the Network name (SSID) and the WPA-PSK Encryption Key and the WPA-PSK Version is set to WPA+WPA2. Since doing this there have been no large night period uses just the same few KBs which plus.net and Thomsom suggest is probably the modem completing a few checks. We have also turned the modem off at night and obviously nothing then happens and our usage levels in the months since that overrrun have been well within our 10MB limit. However the fear remains that someone is/can access our wirless connection during the day/paid for period.

As long as you use WPA encryption ( which you are ) and your encryption key is not obvious or easy guessable ( i.e. use a random string of more than 13 letters and numbers ) then the possibility of unauthorised access to your wireless is virtuallly nil!. Using the 'New stations are not allowed' function on the router will, in reality, not increase the level of security very much. You would think it would, but the router uses the MAC address to determine if a new station is trying to connect and MAC addressess are quite easy to spoof.
You might also want to check your PlusNet firewall setttings here https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=firewall
Setting this to High or even Low will reduce the amount of unsolicited background traffic.
 
I hope that puts your mind at rest somewhat.

[#4]

can you not just turn all that wps off and set the thompson up like any other router to reserve ip address of the mac addresses and then lock it down to just those pc's ip ranges. ie whack dhcp to say 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.4.
You would have to increase this range each time you want a new device to connect
to be honest the the largest figure youve qouted overnight of 1.5mb could be due to a p2p client ie utorrent being used not long before turning your pc off and the tracker still sending connection attempts to your wan ip address for some time after
echo what misterw said about the figure being much much higher if some one was hacking you to use your internet connection