best wireless router for windows and mac business

Best wireless router for windows and mac business how to#
Best wireless router for windows and mac business Patch#

If you are running Windows XP, you'll need service pack 2 and you'll need to download the WPA2 patch that's located here. Step 1: Windows OS: First make sure your operating system is up to date.

Best wireless router for windows and mac business how to#

We'll get back to this in a moment, but let's show you how to get this train going. The WPA2 standard supports two different authentication mechanisms: one using standard RADIUS servers and the other with a shared key, similar to how WEP works. There is one more acronym I'll mention, and that is Pre-Shared Key or PSK. Both of these allow for stronger encryption, and while the differences between the two aren't that important for our purposes, you should pick one method when you set up your network as you'll see in a moment.įinally, the protocol creates a new encryption key for each session, while the older encryption standards used the same key for everybody - which is why they were a lot easier to crack.Īlso part of the new standard is Pairwise Master Key caching, where faster connections occur when a client goes back to a wireless access point to which the client already is authenticated. Second, there are two encryption methods that WPA2 adds: one called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and one called Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). These are the commercial-grade encryption products that are available on enterprise-class products. How does WPA2 differ from earlier versions? First, it supports the 802.11i encryption standards that have been ratified by the IEEE. This recipe will show you how to make it work. It is currently the best encryption method but getting it going isn't so simple. This is now showing up on a number of routers and is worth the extra few steps involved to make sure your communications are secure. If you want to keep your neighbors out of your business, then you need to use Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (WPA2) encryption. For instance, Tom's Networking has a three-part series that shows you how easy it is to crack Wired Equivalent Privacy. It is the difference between using a deadbolt and a simple lock on your front door.

This means that you are running your networks with inferior protocols that offer a false sense of protection because these protocols are very easily broken into. Some of you have put encryption on your wireless networks but aren't using the best wireless security methods. If you are like most people, your home or small office wireless router probably is running without any encryption whatsoever, and you are a sitting duck for someone to easily view your network traffic.