NETWORK MANAGEMENT PROVIDING NETWORK HEALTH INFORMATION AND LOCKDOWN SECURITY

摘要

Network management to establish and maintain the health and security of a computing network, such as a home network. A network management tool may identify the media access control (MAC) address for each device in the network, and allow a user to identify which devices are authorized to be a member of the network. If the network gateway device supports MAC address filtering, a user can then employ the network management tool to configure the router to exclude non-authorized devices from joining or remaining in the network based upon their MAC addresses. Further, the network management tool may allow a user to configure a wireless gateway device to stop broadcasting its service set identifier (SSID), change the SSID, or both, identify to the user when a wireless gateway device is using encryption, and, if so, what type of encryption. Still further, the tool may monitor the status of various software applications on devices in the network, and then alert a user if the status of any of the devices in the network requires attention. Further, the network management tool may provide recommendations to a user for correcting or changing the status of the monitored software applications.