Simple steps to deter the casual piggy-backer (not hacker)

Someone was caught for stealing network bandwidth recently. With wireless broadband being so popular, I guess there should be a few unsecured networks around. Below are some steps which I take to secure my wireless network from casual piggy-backers. Real hackers can overcome most of them, except maybe if you use an authentication scheme like WPA.

1. Change the default SSID and disable SSID broadcast (just found out my router, DLink DI-624+ doesn't allow disabling of SSIDs. Oh well.)
   


2. Limit the number of IP addresses that DHCP assigns.
   


3. Enable MAC filtering so only registered wireless cards can be used.
   


4. Enable authentication scheme, such as WPA-PSK.
   

Nothing is fool-proof, SSIDs can be easily sniffed, MAC addresses can be spoofed, some authentication schemes such as WEP are easily cracked, but if we are dealing with casual piggy-backers these steps should be sufficient.

cci[RR]us talks about how the offender could have been discovered. It is interesting to wonder what if the owner deliberately opened up access to his network in order to farm the usernames and passwords of these people tapping into his network illegally, and then use this info to get the offenders into trouble.