Wifi working fine until decided to secure it

Number of posts: 1 Registration date: 2008-12-06

Hi Mike

I hope you can help me. My wifi is unsecured. My son tried to secure it the other day and now both his and his sisters applemacs cant connect to the internet.

I've read some posts on the webuser and you mention a profile. I wonder if this is the problem with the macs. When I look for the network it is no longer showing on the list. Can't join it either even when putting in the password he's assigned to it.

Can you offer any assistance. We've been wireless since 2005 and had no problems once connected.

I'm going to try my works laptop on Wednesday to see if it can connect.

thanks
Tessa

Number of posts: 376 Registration date: 2008-10-14 Location: Birmingham UK

Hi there.
I'm not into modems/routers very much, but can I just start the ball rolling by asking if the password has been inserted into both the PC/s and the modem/router?

_________________
If it ain't broke.
Don't fix it.

Quote:

When I look for the network it is no longer showing on the list

Possibly the first thing to check is that broadcasting of the router's SSID hasn't inadvertently been disabled. Connect a computer (doesn't matter whether Mac or Windows) to the router by ethernet cable, type the router's IP address into your web browser and, after entering the router's Username/Password, its configuration pages should open. Within the "wireless" settings there will be one to enable/disable broadcasting of the SSID (network name).

As regards securing the wireless network, this is done with either WEP or WPA encryption and for WEP, there are very specific requirements for the encryption key.

64-bit WEP uses a key of 5 ASCII or 10 Hexadecimal characters.

128-bit WEP uses a key of 13 ASCII or 26 Hexadecimal characters.

However, some wireless networking hardware doesn't like an ASCII key so, wherever possible, a Hexadecimal one should be used. The Hexadecimal characters are the numbers "0" to "9" and letters "a" to "f" only, a total of 16 available characters. (ASCII characters are basically the letters, numbers and symbols on the keyboard)

For WPA, a string of between 8 and 63 ASCII characters is used.

_________________
Mike