Information Addicts

A friend came over to my house the other day and the Wirless Access Point caught his eye, he turned around and he said to me “Should your wireless thingy be next to the window as I thought someone could connect to your network’. I explained to him that my Wireless Access Point was secured using WPA (Wireless Protected Access) encryption which prevented anyone connecting to the network. My friend looked at me and said “Oh that’s good”. I knew that he didn’t know exactly what I meant, and I went on to explain what WPA actually was, (incidentally your Wireless point doesn’t have to be near the window for someone to connect to your network).

There are more people using WPA now, but still not enough know how to configure it. Many people still use WEP security (Wired Equivalent Privacy) which was designed to be a light-touch encryption, that gave similar protection to using a wired network. However, it’s now relatively easy to crack. It’s not a good idea to rely on WEP encryption for any length of time.

Try this, right-click the wireless connection icon in your notification area, (that’s the computer icon next to the time in the bottom right of your computer screen) choose ‘View available wireless networks’, has your Access Point found any other APs?

If your Wireless AP has picked someone else’s network it will tell you if that access point is secure or not, if they are not secured you can click on the Access point and connect to someone else’s network and surf the internet. If their network is secure you will see a message with ‘Security-enabled wireless network (WPA)’.

This is the same if you don’t have WPA configured because someone else can connect to your network and use your internet connection, and if they are clever enough could connect to your PC and possibly access your files etc. You might even think that you have nothing to hide and that if someone can connect to the internet through your wireless connection that is ok as you are not that bothered.

However, what would you say if I told you that someone browsed child pornography sites or any other illegal websites through your connection, then that would look to your Internet Service Provider as if you had viewed these web pages, not good. That’s looking at the worst case scenario but we can prevent that by following the below instructions, here goes:

1. Most wireless kit is capable of supporting WPA, but if yours doesn’t, then you may need to obtain a firmware update for your router or access point and also your Wireless network card that is inside computer case to add this feature. Visit the manufacturer’s Web site to find out more details. For WPA support in Windows, you need to be using Windows XP with SP-2 installed or SP-1 with the WPA upgrade. Don’t be put off by this if you are not sure about how to update your gear try following the rest of this tutorial and see if you have WPA in your settings, however you should always try and make sure that you have the latest updates if possible.

2. Configuring WPA-PSK for Your Router or Access Point, The first step in constructing an ultra secure home network is to set up your WPA capable router or access point for WPA-PSK. Use a wired connection, if possible, to specify these settings since a wired connection will not be impacted if you make a mistake (if your Access point or PC doesn’t have LAN ports or anywhere for your Ethernet cable to go, you will have to skip this bit and try to do it Wirelessly). You should have been supplied with an Ethernet cable when you purchased your Access point, if not go down and buy one from you local Computer shop.

Switch off your PC and Access point and then plug one end of the cable into your Wired Lan port normally at the back of the PC and the other end into your Wireless Access Point. Switch on your Access Point and then your PC. Start by accessing the administrative internal Web page of your access point or router. You will need to look either at the instructions that came with your Access Point or go to the manufacturers’ website. Normally you would enter an IP address for example 192.168.1.1. into your Web browser then you would need to enter a username (or admin name) and password, again this should be either supplied with your Access point or you will need to go to the manufactures website.

Please note: The WPA configuration interface for WPA-enabled access points or routers may vary. Following are the steps I used to configure this equipment for WPA-PreSharedKey after accessing the Web administration interface on a Linksys Access Point. Note that other vendor’s equipment may have a slightly different interface but the procedures should be very similar.

3. When you are logged on click on the top menu tabs until you locate a sub menu labelled Security, Wireless Security or Network Authentication. You will then see a box for WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA Pre-Shared key and NONE will be available from this menu.

4. Click WPA-PSK or WPA Pre-Shared, and if you have the option underneath for TKIP.

5. Enter a hard-to-guess passphrase (between 8 and 63 characters) in the WPA Pre Shared Key box (and make a note of it).

6. Click Apply or Save Settings.

7. The other setting I would like you to change is the default username and password for your Access Point as someone else could logon to it and change the settings locking you out. Click on the top tabs until you see in the field below that is labelled Username or Gateway username (usually in the Administration menu) and enter a hard to guess username. Then change the password to something difficult to guess (6-14 charaters), click save settings or OK and come out of your Access Point menus (make a note of your username and password in case you logon to your AP at a later date).

8. Switch off the Access Point and the PC, take the cable out. Then switch the AP back on and then the PC.

How to Configure WPA-PSK on Windows XP
1. Right click on My Network Places on your taskbar and choose Properties, (or click Start> Right click My Network Places and choose Properties) then right click Wireless network connection> Properties and choose the Wireless Network tab. Remember your Wireless card might be slightly different so check your cards instructions or go to the manufactures website.

2. Click on your network, (you can see from the screen shot below that this network is called Vista) then click on properties and choose WPA-PSK on the Network Authentication field (see screen shot headed Vista properties).

3. In the Network key field enter the same password that you used for the Wireless Access point, and enter it again in the field below.

Click ok and after a short time your PC will connect to your Wireless access point.
Hopefully that will be it and your Wireless Network will be up and running, but I have worked with PCs long enough to know that things don’t always go straight forward. If not go back to the Wireless AP or cards website to see if you can get step by step instructions.

Good luck and safe Wireless networking.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under PC Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.