On 5 Jun 2006 at 1:04, Carl Houseman wrote:

> As for preventing others from accessing your wireless network, first make it
> work without security.  Then look for a configuration on the router for WPA

It's shocking to hear people suggest this.... I NEVER get it working without 
security. I only turn off the security if there is no other way to get it 
working, IME, with modern gear, that usually means a defective router. Most 
notably this happens with the Linksys BEFW11S4 Ver 4.0 units.  I've seen this 
happen on about a half dozen cases, as soon as you upgrade the unit to a wpa 
supporting firmware, the only way you can get an ip address from the router's 
dhcp server is to turn off ALL wifi security.  Anytime I walk into a client 
with one of these now, I just tell them to junk it (pass it onto someone 
else).

> (not WEP).   If you can choose WPA-PSK or WPA-TKIP choose that.   Set a nice
> long PSK (pre-shared key, a.k.a. wireless password) that is random letters
> and numbers.   Take the option to disable SSID broadcast.

The PSK should be AT LEAST 16 random characters.  Note, many of the Linksys 
units do NOT support anything other than alphanumerics (no punctuation) for 
the WPA PSK. It may accept the other characters but you will NOT be able to 
connect to the router using that PSK.

> On the XP laptop, you want to configure wireless using Windows XP, not
> software that came with the wireless card.  This process varies greatly
> depending on the wireless NIC in the laptop, so make/model of laptop and/or
> make/model of wireless card are important if you want detailed help.

Yes, the variability for this configuration is astounding even between 
devices by the same manufacturer.

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Harondel J. Sibble 
Sibble Computer Consulting
Creating solutions for the small business and home computer user.
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