LIKE MOST WIFI ROUTERS, this one is managed from a browser and when first installed is configured to use basic Wep (Wired Equivalent Privacy) encryption to protect users. Better than nothing at all, Wep is widely supported on most Wifi notebooks and adapters but is relatively easy to crack. We want to switch to WPA (Wifi Protected Access) instead or, better still, the later WPA2 security as these protocols use much more sophisticated encryption technologies.

SOME ROUTERS WILL SUPPORT WPA or WPA2 -. Enterprise, but the Enterprise protocols are designed for large companies with dedicated authentication and key management servers and should be avoided. Instead, home users should choose WPA or WPA2 Personal, often referred to as WPA-PSK (short for Pre-Shared Key), where you manually enter a key to scramble your data. On this router, we can choose just WPA2 or, if we need to support older notebooks and adapters, a mix of WPA and WPA2.


THE KEY USED BY WPA and WPA2 can be anywhere -. between eight and 63 characters (letters or numbers - the longer and more random, the better) long. More advanced users can type their key in hexadecimal, but you don't get anything extra from this approach. Some routers will suggest a key or let you generate a random key from a more intelligible passphrase. You will need to enter the same key into your clients, so make a note of it. Some let you store keys on a USB stick, but it's still worth jotting down too,just in case.


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WE'VE LEFT THE ROUTER to broadcast the network name as turning it off causes problems connecting to the Lan and isn't much of a security measure anyway. Notice, however, that we have taken the option to allow new stations to connect only after they've been registered. Also referred to as Mac address filtering, this is a common option whereby new Wifi clients have to be manually identified (using their hardware-based Mac address) before the router will let them fully connect to the Lan. Typically, a separate menu will show the clients that have tried to connect, from which authorised addresses can be selected.


WE NOW HAVE TO configure our wireless clients to match the enhanced security ofthe router. In this example we're using a Dell Vostro notebook running Windows Vista. Having taken the option to view available networks, we have identified 'HomeLan' on the Wifi router and clicked the Connect button. We're now being prompted to type in the key we entered back in Step 3.


REMEMBER HOW IN STEP 4 we took the option to allow -, only registered stations to access the Lan? Once the router has identified our notebook, here's where we can opt to allow or disallow access. Note also that, by default, the DHCP server in our router will give this client an address automatically (we're using the 10.0.0.xxx range of addresses) and there's an option to ensure it always gets the same one. We wouldn't take this option here, but it could be useful for things such as printers and servers where you don't want the IP address to change.