How to Kick People Off Your Wi-Fi Network

Do you want to kick people off your WiFi network? Sometimes you find your WiFi network slow and wonder why this happens. Most often, the reason for a slow WiFi connection would be the crowding of devices on the network.

Once you reveal your WiFi password to someone, that person can access your network anytime. Moreover, they can connect all their devices to your modem. This can be problematic, as you lose your valuable data and network speed because of the people who loot internet service from your device.

How to Kick People Off Your Wi-Fi Network

This article brings forth the different ways with which you can stop others from using your WiFi network.

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Method 1: Change Your Wi-Fi Password

The most secure and simplest method to stop people from using your WiFi is to change your WiFi password. When you change your password, the devices that try entering the network using the old password will be restricted.

This method disconnects all the devices that are using your Wi-Fi, including your own phone and PC. In order to access the network again, you will have to enter the newly set password. Those who do not have the new password will not be able to connect to the network.

Even though changing the password can be a little hard for you as you have to enter the new password for each of your devices. Nevertheless, this is the only error-free method that successfully kicks off other people from using your WiFi.

Even if you blacklist some devices from accessing your router, those people can connect other devices to this network, as they know the password. In case they do not remember the password, there are multiple ways to recover saved Wi-Fi passwords on almost all the devices.

Moreover, if you are hosting an open WiFi network, anyone will be able to access it even without a password. To change the password, you need to make modifications to the settings of your router. Follow these steps to change your router’s password:

Step 1: Log in to the Router admin panel with the router’s IP address, for example, 192.168.1.1.

Step 2: Enter the admin username and password.

Step 3: Navigate to Settings and select the “Change Router Password” option.

Step 4: Enter the new password and save the changes. Make sure you keep a strong password.

Method 2: Use MAC Address Filtering on Your Router

Some routers have access control features that can decide which devices to connect and which not to. Every wireless device has a special and unique MAC address. Certain routers allow you to ban a specific device from connecting to the network by adding its MAC address to a blacklist.

Some routers give an option to set a whitelist where you can save certain devices that you approve of connecting. All the other devices that are not in the whitelist will be unable to connect with the network. Even though this method seems convenient, this option is not available in all routers. Moreover, this method is not completely secure. Anyone with your Wi-Fi password can change the MAC address of their device and match it with a MAC address listed under your whitelist.

This allows them to connect to your network by taking the place of an approved device. In addition to this, you would need to enter MAC addresses manually if you want to connect a new device. Entering the MAC address each time you accept a new device to share the connection is a frustrating job. Therefore, this method is not the ideal one.

However, if you need to restrict some devices temporarily from connecting to your network, you can use this method.

Step 1: You will need to go into your router’s settings to check if your device supports this option in the first place.

Step 2: On some Netgear routers, the option would appear as the “wireless card access list”.

Step 3: At the same time, some other Netgear routers such as the Nighthawk, provides the access control feature that can control just internet access. With this option, the blocked devices will still be able to connect to the Wi-Fi but cannot receive internet access.

Step 4: Similarly, Google Wi-Fi routers allow you to “pause” the internet access for other devices. This will deny internet connection for the devices but will not ward them off your Wi-Fi.

Method 3: Use a Guest Network in the First Place

You can solve the network crowding issue easily by setting up a guest Wi-Fi network on your router if you are providing guest access to the network. The guest network is separate from the admin access network. You can access the main network by yourself and not share it with your guests.

Many routers provide this feature, and it is available as a “guest network” or “guest access” in the settings. You can keep a different password for your guest network. If you need to change the password of the guest network, you can do it without changing the main network’s password. This way, you can keep your own devices away from network restrictions.

You can also keep the guest networks in “isolation”, where they cannot access the primary network. If you enable the “isolation” option, the guest devices will not get access to file shares on your PC or other network-connected resources.

The “isolation” option appears as “allow guests access to local network resources”. For this too, you will have to go to your router’s settings to check if it allows a “guest network” feature. This method is more common and recommendable than access control lists.

Method 4: Remove Your WiFi from Their Phone

Even though this is not a likely case, if you have access to someone’s device, you can disconnect it from the Wi-Fi network and make the device forget the password. For iPhones, you can select the option to forget the network and for Windows, you can delete the saved Wi-Fi network profile. If you have access to someone’s device to remove the password and the person does not remember your password, this would solve the problem.

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Conclusion

Guest devices continuously using up your Wi-Fi network can be an irritating issue sometimes. While there is no permanent solution for this, you can try out some temporary methods. This article provides you with some easy methods to kick people off your WiFi. I hope this has been helpful to you.