New Wifi Network Passphrase Tips

When we set up new networks for our clients, we often get questions about Wi-Fi passphrases—so we put together these quick tips and guidelines.

Let’s start with a great comic that describes complicated passwords with special characters vs. longer ‘passphrases’ and why they’re better:

We find this to be a great primer for what we’re trying to accomplish with passwords in general. Symbols while making it more complex for humans, don’t deter computers from brute forcing the password by much. We want to employ these with your new wireless network. This will generally consist of 2 networks, 1 that is internal to all of the devices in your home from computers to TVs to printers. You want this to be fairly long but easy to remember. The length can be annoying when typing it in, but you only have to do it once on each device, so it’s really not too bad. The second is a guest-only network that is segregated from your main network. You could give this password out to anyone, and it wouldn’t make any difference- it’s secured and completely separated from your internal network. So here, security isn’t as important, but ease of access for your guests is. This has to be at least 8 characters, but could be 2, 4-letter words repeated (e.g. fishfish, goldgold.. or goldfish.) I give some more examples below.

Generally the Network names would use Proper Case, but can be UPPERCASE or lowercase with or without spaces. For the passphrases for both networks, we recommend all lowercase with no spaces for ease of entry on devices without a full keyboard.

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Main Network SSID/Network Name – Recommend Proper Case/Internal/Broadcast/Nothing Personally Identifiable

Main Network Key – Use a Passphrase. Longer is better, doesn’t need to be complex just long and unrelated to the Network Name, recommend all lowercase w/ no spaces. Something super easy to remember, like your favorite song lyric, but decently long, and over 16 characters or longer.

Guest Network SSID/Network Name – Recommend Proper Case/Public/Broadcast

Guest Network Key – Simple is better, and unrelated to the network name, recommend all lower case w/ no spaces, min. 8 characters

Examples:

Main Network SSID Name: Overnight, Sous vide, Fishstick, Longhorn, Racecar, Fireplace, Dark Roast (anything not identifiable like name/address numbers, etc.)

Main Network Key: allyouneedisloveloveloveisallyouneed, todayisgonnabethedaythatimgonnathrowitbacktoyou, itsbeenaharddaysnightandivebeenworkinglikeadog, isthisthereallifeisthisjustfantasycaughtinalandside, etc.

Guest Network SSID Name: CastIron, Lincolnwood IL, Sunny Day, Blue Fish, Arizona, West Rogers Park (anything not identifiable like name/address numbers, etc.)

Guest Network Key: thecolorofmoney, rightside, , adimeadozen, bestofbothworlds, chicagofire, ablessingindisguise, southbound, jumprope, jetplane, etc. (I’ll include some additional examples a the bottom.)
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Understanding what makes a secure wifi password, and employing it’s use in your network system can protect you from outside threats. If you need assistance with your wifi or network, please contact us and we’ll do everything we can to help.

Here’s some additional examples of the minimum length password (8 characters) that you can use for a secured guest network: