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XP wireless questions ...setting encryption

Hey all,

I set up a lot of gateways for comcast as a contractor. I am not claiming to be any sort of expert. I am self taught and the company I work for does not have any formal training on the wireless networks. I do not deal with the file and printer sharing part of it, just internet access. I set up the router with the 128 bit wep encryption and thats all they really are requiring.

I have some questions for myself though.

1- I put in the wep key when I try to connect with whatever wireless computer. I then go to the properties and also paste the wep key in the two places there. I keep the option of "shared" instead of open. I also uncheck the "enable 802.1x authentification". Then usually hit "ok" and then get out of the menus. I will often reboot the pc in question and connect to make sure all is well. Should these steps be taken? Are they correct for a minimal setup with encryption enabled? Why is it sometimes the wep key is not saved in the options menu for the network; I sometimes have to repeat this step twice?

2- What are the minimal steps necessary to make Win 2000 Pro get onto a wireless network (assuming the network card drivers are installed). Is this the same sort of procedures you would use for Win95 as well? The two look similar in that respect.

The two manufacturers I use are primarily Linksys and Netgear. These are the ones they offer from my company.

Thanks for any tips,

SL

Reply to
SL
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Sorta.

802.1x authentication is only used with WPA encryption. It can be used with WEP or no encryption, but requires a RADIUS server to do the authentication. If you have XP SP2 installed, the selection of 802.1x should be automaticly set correctly. However, SP1 and before allow you to turn on 802.1x authentication, when it's not needed, resulting in a disconnect after 10 minutes.

As for open versus shared authentication, the correct answer is open. Shared means shared key, which for WEP uses the encryption key for authentication. This give a sniffer both the encrypted and unencrypted keys, which makes WEP key recovery almost trivial. It should be set to open, not shared.

formatting link

Hopefully, you're not doing any Windoze 95 installs. The steps for Win2000 are roughly the same as for XP and are usually detailed in the documentation for the wireless client. The problem is that you have a choice of wirless clients. There's: 1. The manufacturers client program (e.g. Intel Proset) 2. Windoze Wireless Zero Config 3. Boingo client. 4. T-Mobile (Starbucks) client. 5. Odyssy client (Funk Software) 6. A few dozen others. 7. Add some network front end programs. (Toshiba Config-Free, IBM Thinkvantage) Obviously, the proceedures vary. However, all of these have some type of "search for wireless networks" feature. Use it, double click on the network name, and enter the encryption key. For WEP, if the ASCII encryption key fails, then try again with the HEX version of the key.

Well, time for some heresy. Both these vendors have some products with broken drivers. The very first thing I do is download the lastest update from their web pile. I don't even bother trying what's in the box. For Linksys, I kinda prefer Windoze Wireless Zero Config. For Netgear, FirstGear is quite good and useful.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks much Jeff,

You answered my questions quite well. I will look into some of the options you mention for Win2000. The only trouble is time, its not on my side.. :) I think my issue with Win2k is my associating IE (which comcast is requiring) to find the wireless adaptor like it looks for the LAN. I simply do not have any personal experience with that OS. Plus, the machines I seem to of have run into are slow by todays standards, and the customers seem to even more outdated than the machine. Lots of reboots and every possible popup from their leftover AOL dialup connection. I don't think I need to say more on that issue.

Sorry, I may be sounding malicious. Thats not my intent. I average about a 12-14 hour day and a slow pc with bloatware will test the nerves.

Anyways, in regards to the brand of gateway, I guess they seem the same to me for the most part. I never use the Linksys software for drivers. I can agree with your comment. I as a matter of fact made my fellow tech's a disk with the current drivers from their site. I test stuff on my personal pc's at home and found the current drivers are always better. I guess thats pretty much a universal thing with all pc stuff. Im more of a hardware guy. I certainly know the "latest drivers" issue. Plus, I found that the pc/laptop that some other techs load the packeged software/drivers make things difficult. The linksys software that loads will prevent WinXp from running the show and usually never connects. If I load drivers only, and let WinXp/98 etc... take over, there are no issues.

Anyways Jeff, you have been quite helpful. Any other tips of course are appreciated.

Happy St. Patricks day by the way...

SL

Reply to
SL

Well, Windoze 2000 is fairly close to XP but the differences will drive you nuts. The big problem is recovering from a registry trashout. That can happen when you install almost anything. With XP, you have "System Restore" to handle things almost automagically. With Windoze 2000, the best you can do without adding additional software is MS Backup. Try it: Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Backup. Run the Wizard and when it asks what to backup, check the box that says "Registry and System Files only" (or something like that). Find an empty directory to drop it into. It will save about 200Mbytes of system files every time you run it.. It's better than nothing.

On the job learning is rough if you make a mistake. Practice on your own machines.

No. The issue is the most cable companies assume that the user has a working browser in order to do the initial registration and signup. There are more than a few ways to misconfigure a browser. In addition, the common spyware and a few plugins, tend to make the browser glitchy, slow, and useless. However, it's the only common user interface around. If you have Firefox or Opera available on the customers machine, I would certainly use them as IE6 tends to be a major security problem, especially on machines that have never seen an update.

Actually, brand new machines from Dell and Gateway also come with excessive software, irritating popups, demands for registration, and such. Just think of the spyware as a replacement for what Dell and Gateway supply with a new machine.

Yeah, I know the feeling. One of my customers has PII/300 with

128MBytes of ram running XP. I can't seem to convince him that he should either allow me to add more ram, or get a new machine. That stupendous decision has so far taken months with no decision.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thanks Jeff,

Your replys had me laugh>

Reply to
SL

The PII/300 with XP and 128MBytes of RAM is one of my customers machines. It's amazingly stable once it boots since it only runs one legal application. However, it did take about 5 minutes to boot.

Incidentally, my billing machine is a Dell PII/333 running W2K and is one of the fastest Windoze machines I have. Only 256MBytes but it has an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller running a Quantum something 10,000 RPM drive. Most of the P4 3GHz machine spend their spare time waiting for disk I/O.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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