h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know why, but I always have alot of trouble every time I have to set up my powerbook for wireless. I move around alot and use wifi, my router at different places, and other people's routers, so I have to change things from time to time.

I've just reset my dlink wireless router to defaults, set it up for ethernet (which is working fine) and am trying to get airport working.

I deleted all the previous airport and internet connect settings, including the airport plist file from the OS library (naughty I know, but I couldn't find another way to get rid of everything and start again).

I get confused with the whole locations thing, and networks, and why they use Automatic as a name for two different functions, and Internet Connect. Can anyone please explain what I need to do, step by step?

I may not have the router set up right for wireless either, I couldn't figure out whether to use WEP, WPA etc security.

I can't help with this, I'm afraid, kea, other than to say *avoid WEP*. It's the security equivalent of a damp paper bag - there are tools freely available online that will let you crack a WEP password in three minutes or less. WPA/WPA2 has been cracked too, but it takes a *lot* longer.

Cool, I'll try WPA then I have a choice between WPA and WPA-PSK. If the latter I have to put in a PSK-hex or PSK string. Are those passwords?

Or do I set the password on the mac only, not the router?

"Are those passwords?"

Yes. "PSK" stands for "Pre-Shared Key". It's the best way to do things, and yes, you need to put the same password into the router and every machine that's going to connect to it.

For additional security, your router may have a "whitelist" function where you enter a list of the MAC addresses that are allowed to connect; if you know the MAC addresses* of all your mireless devices (hint: on a Mac the MAC address(!) is printed on a sticker on the bottom) you can enable this feature and list them all here - nobody without military-grade hacking tools will be able to connect to try to crack your passwords after that.

(* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address )

I'm trying the PSK but I don't know how to choose the hex. I just made up a password and got an error message saying invalid PSK hex value. Does it have to be a certain format?

I'm having a look for the whitelist function. What else could it be called?

"Does it have to be a certain format?"

If it's hex you can only use the characters 0-9 and A-F.

"I'm having a look for the whitelist function. What else could it be called?"

MAC Filtering?

I ended up using PSK string . I seem to have gotten airport working. How do I know I've set up the password security right?

I can't find anywhere that I can specify the MAC address. I can find pages on the router info that has the MAC address on it. There are alot of settings pages though.

The manual discusses something called bridge filters but I can't find it in the router settings. Maybe it's not in the mac version.

"I seem to have gotten airport working. How do I know I've set up the password security right?"

If you've set a password, and things are still connecting, you've got it right.

Don't worry too much about the MAC address filtering. It's nice, but anybody determined enough to crack a WPA password could probably get past that too, eventually.

Thanks for your help