NETGEAR WG111U Chapter Wireless Security Configuration, Understanding the Security Options

Chapter 5

Wireless Security Configuration

This chapter describes how to configure the security features of your NETGEAR Super AG Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter WG111U.

Note: The instructions in this section refer to the NETGEAR WG111U configuration utility. For Windows XP users to use the NETGEAR configuration utility, the Windows XP configuration utility must be deselected. If you did not enable the NETGEAR utility when you installed the WG111U Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter, open the network connections from the system tray icon, click the Properties button, click the Wireless Networks tab and then clear the “Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings” check box.

Understanding the Security Options

For a full discussion of wireless security technologies, please see “Wireless Networking Overview” on page B-1. The WG111U configuration utility provides the following security options:

•WEP

Wired Equivalent Privacy is an existing, widely implemented and supported, data encryption protocol for 802.11 wireless networks. All wireless nodes on the network are configured with a static 64-bit or 128-bit Shared Key for data encryption but authentication is optional.

•WPA-PSK

WPA Pre-Shared Key (WPA-PSK) performs authentication and strong data encryption that includes dynamic key generation based on a pre-shared key. WPA-PSK does not need RADIUS or certificate servers.

When you use the WG111U configuration utility to configure these security options, you can save your settings in a profile. For example, if you use WPA-PSK at work but WEP at home, you can have work and home profiles that make it easy to switch from one environment to the other. For more information on configuring profiles, see “Using Configuration Profiles” on page 4-1.

Wireless Security Configuration 5-1

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