How to protect my home network?

I was told by my IT friend sounds like someone "owns my router." I read through the Snort manual but don't understand 80% of it. Can someone point me in the direction of some tools/tutorials/sugestions as to how to monitor my network for intrusion?

I know the basics such as complex & long passwords, disabling remote management of router, "stealthing" the router, etc. but it is obvious someone is having fun at my expense (blocking my often visited wepages with a "webpage is having diffulties -- click here for help" suspicious looking dialogue message that I naturally ignore and the website works fine on my neighbors computer.

I followed your guidance on running malware scanners of various kinds and comes up clean, but I have strong reason to believe my network has been compromised. I am using the router as my DHCP server linking to OpenDNS, and have configured my browser to use my router's IP as the DNS server. Network sharing and Netbios over Tcip is disabled per GRC site recommendations. Sometimes when I log in I get "New private network detected" -- then disconnect and try again then it will work and connect to network 1 (my router). Thanks.

load up a program called (active ports) and see what you are connecting to.

Also a sniffer may be of use here but you will need to work that one out for yourself but this website has a very good break down of the basics Click here

bbunny123,
When things work fine - run ipconfig
Then when 'New network" is detected - run ipconfig again
Any differences might help answer.

To run ipconfig:
Start, Run, type in 'ipconfig /all' - skip the quotes, don't skip space before /
Look at the results. Compare. Post here, if needed.

Is this on WindowsXP?
Is it wired or wireless? If wireless, you might be linking to some other network - your neighbor's .
When it says "New private..." does it give an IP address, if so which? If it's like 169.254.0.0 it's no connection, dead ip before you obtain a real IP.

You configured the browser (which) to use router as the DNS server. However, from what you describe , the router uses OpenDNS, perhaps you could tell the same thing, OpenDNS, to the browser.
But, I would, instead, do it in the network properties for TCP/IP to be effective overall, for all communication.

Thanks guys. One computer is Win Vista 64 (where I get the alternate network detected); it's also wired. I'm documenting everything since this has been going on for awhile, and the advice you have both given is great. I think we'll need to hire a consultant though, it's so tiresome. Have a nice weekend.