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Saving Changes

When you finish entering your changes, press the Save button at the bottom of the page.

Access Point Login

The access point requires you to log in with a user name and password. This ensures that no one can make unauthorized changes to your access point’s settings. Please note that the user name and password are case-sensitive.

Wireless Security

WPA2 is the newest encryption method available and may not be supported by all client devices yet. If you have both WPA2 and WPA client devices, you can select “WPA2 and WPA (PSK)” and the access point will automatically support those clients.

WPA is a newer encryption method that uses a 256-bit key, so it’s even more secure than older methods. Since it’s newer, however, there are some older wireless client devices that don’t support it. If you need to communicate with a device that doesn’t support WPA (PSK), you will need to use WEP.

WEP is a slightly older encryption method. You can select either a 64-bit key or a more secure 128-bit key. (It doesn’t matter if you select ASCII or hex—that only affects the number and type of characters in the key.) If you use WEP encryption, U.S. Robotics recommends that you select “WEP Open.”

802.1x is used primarily by businesses that require advance authentication methods.

MAC Filter

You can use MAC filtering to either allow or deny access to your access point by certain wireless devices. This is an excellent way to ensure that only your own devices can use your access point and its Internet connection.

When MAC filtering is enabled, the “How to Add a New Wireless Client” tutorial provides more information on how MAC filtering affects adding new wireless clients and how to locate a client’s MAC address.

You can also learn more about MAC addresses and MAC filtering in the user manual on the installation CD-ROM.

Access Point Login

You will need to enter the user name and password in order to access the access point in the future, so you may want to write them down.

Wireless

There are a few options for encrypting the wireless communications between the access point and its clients, and they’re all designed to protect your privacy. You will need to enter these same settings for each wireless client.

Method:

(The keys must be  characters long.)
Encryption:

(The pass phrase must be between eight and sixty-three characters long.)

(To disable key rotation, set this value to zero.)

MAC Filter

Use this section to allow (or deny) specific wireless devices the ability to connect to the access point. For example, you could specify that only your laptop, gaming system and digital video recorder can connect. (Please note that wired clients are always permitted to connect.)

Press the Allow Current Clients button to automatically permit the current wireless client devices to connect to the access point. (The changes aren’t saved until you press the Save button.)


When you finish entering your changes, press Save.