I need help configuring my router for security

[forumdude123]

My older westell versalink 327W died yesterday, and AT&T offered me a new 2 Wire Modem/Router combo, and i will receive it today. My older modem used 128 bit WEP, no mac address filtering, etc. On my new router, i hear there will be WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK, and WEP. Should i use wpa or wpa2, or will i be fine with wep. I am not familiar with these settings, and the tech support person I spoke with said i should be fine with standard settings. I don't believe the tech support representative, because she didn't sound too sure about what she was talking about.

Is there anything i should do to configure the router other than wep or wpa. Thanks to those who can help.

[vizard_ichigo]

I suggest you use WPA2 or WPA, but this would depend not only on what your wireless adapter supports, but the lowest encryption supported by the other wireless devices or computers in your network. On most cases, you might not find the word WPA as in some routers, they call it as Pre Shared Key or PSK. Also there are those for personal, enterprise, radius etc, just select the one for personal. I had the same problem once but the guys from a support number I called before helped me out and even taught me a few info about it, if you want live assistance in setting your new router, maybe you can try this number 1-877-787-8749, forgot their exact name, suptrix of some sort but I now they could help in some way.

regards,

[zeroth]

Hi ForumDude,

WPA PSK is much more secure than WEP - if you get a choice as a subset of that take TKIP. You might get a choice of AES and that would be the most secure if your system will allow...

zeroth

[theshuffler262]

WPA2 is the most secure. WPA would be the next alternative and WEP is obsolete, don't even bother with it. If your internal wireless card doesn't support WPA2 you can download an hotfix that will enable your wireless device to be updated to WPA2 on the Microsoft site (assuming your running a Windows OS).

Taking this a little further...you have 2 choices for encryption when using WPA, one is known as AES, the other is known as TKIP. AES encryption is done in the hardware on the card, and not all cards have the circuitry required for AES security, then TKIP is available for you. But, AES is more secure.

The option of WPA2 with "TKIP or AES" allows you to run a mixed system:  Those devices that can do WPA2 with AES will use that system, less advanced devices (such as PDA's) that can only do WPA will do WPA with TKIP. If you have a choice between AES and TKIP the safe choice that would work in most circumstances would be the latter.

Also if you use WPA2 and this is a home system you can use WPA2-PSK (pre-shared Key).

All in all, either WPA or WPA2 is the right choice to make, however, I would opt for the latter.

[forumdude123]

i used wpa tkip personal yada yada yada... it was the highest supported by my wireless card. thanx for all ur help.

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