simple wpa question

[commOdog]

I just upgraded my crappy compusa 802.11b router to a linksys wrt54g router and want to enable wpa.

I used WEP on my old router.

I know how to turn it on at the router, question is: How do I enable it on my wireless NICs on my PC's.

Only options I see are WEP and disabled on security options.

I have 2 generic wireless 11b pci cards and an integrated card in my laptop. (no G capable cards yet)

Is it possible?

 

[ScottMac]

The drivers for the NIC also ned to support WPA.

Try upgrading the drivers. If you are already running the most curent version, then you will probably need to replace the NIC with one that's more recent .

Good Luck

Scott

 

[cmetz]

commOdog, for WPA, there is an OS piece (the "WPA Supplicant") and there is a device driver piece. The former you can get under Windows XP by installing the WPA support update off of Windows Update. The latter you must get by upgrading the device driver from your vendor.

Problem is, a lot of vendors decided to EOL their old 802.11b gear, and simply say that if you want WPA support, you have to buy new 802.11g gear from them. That is, they will not put any effort into adding the necessary WPA supports to their drivers, and without that piece, you're SOL.

Unfortunately, the WRT54G, like nearly all gear right now, only supports using one mode or the other, so if you have one client that you can get WPA support for but not the other, you can't really build your network for WPA.

WPA is good. Security is good. But deployment and maturity wise, WPA is still not there yet. Give it time and things should improve.

 

[commOdog]

cool thanks, guess i have to go back to WEP since the integrated nic has no way of going WPA.

what a bunch of crapola..........