Today's TechnoChallenge

After yesterday's misadventures with the wireless card(s), you'd think I wouldn't venture into those waters again quite so soon... and yet I did.

I've wanted to introduce WEP encryption into my home network for awhile now, but just never seemed to get around to it. I decided that today was the day!

First I read up on Wired Equivalent Privacy (not Wireless Encryption Protection, which is what I'd thought WEP stood for). I considered going with WPA-PSK instead, but then decided that all I'm really trying to do is ensure no one's catching a free-ride off our network and potentially having access to our shared folders. I don't really expect to be the victim of a hacker's attack. Should I??

So to do this, I used Vicki's PC (wired, temporarily) and my laptop to test it out, which went differently than I'd expected (I had planned to use a passphrase but eventually just went with a HEX key). I made sure my laptop worked after that, and then unplugged the ethernet on Vicki's PC, and made the settings change there. Each time, it was a different experience, because I was changing versions of Windows (Win2000 vs WinXP) and wireless configuration utilities. Finally, I got my basement PC working and then tackled the PS/3. I'm not sure why, but I'd expected the Sony device to be the hardest of the bunch, and instead it was the easiest! It was the only one where it was absolutely straight-forward and I didn't have to experiment at all to get it to work (on my basement PC, for example, I had to think to click on a "Rescan" button before the new settings would work, until which time I had not been able to get any Internet access).

So now any neighbours of ours who might've been using our router to get Internet access are probably cursing. (Not that I think anyone really was!)