[RankingMember]

Is turning the wifi off when you leave a security concern or a power thing, like you're running off the grid? I'm just curious, as if it's the former and I had the same concern I'd just limit access to specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible.

[ancarda]

Both. Why not save power by turning off the router while shrinking the amount of time there is to break into my Wi-Fi network? I can't see a reason to leave my network on while I'm out of my house. I don't need it and as far as I can tell, my neighbors don't either.

That said if someone needed to use Wi-Fi, I'd be happy to open a guest network for them (I think my router can do that but I haven't checked).

[meowface]

I can understand power concerns (though I think home routers use very little KWH), but frankly shutting your router off every day to prevent intrusions is bordering on tinfoil hat-level of concern.

If you shut off WPS on your router and use WPA2-CCMP with a good passphrase, there is really no concern of someone getting into your wireless network.

[meowface]

>specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible.

Both of these measures do nothing if any other device is currently connected to the wireless network. A passive attacker will still be able to see your access point (by inspecting packets sent over the air by other devices to the access point) and can spoof a MAC address to connect to it.

[icebraining]

Not if you're not at home and hence there are no "other devices" sending packets.

[meowface]

This seems like a rather silly edge case though. What if you accidentally leave a phone or tablet at home and it's sending packets intermittently?

Or what if someone decides to hack you when you are at home?

These are not real security measures.