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Forum Discussion
Change WEP>WPA on Extender Only?
Now that I have my WN2500RP successfully extending my primary WiFi (unfortunately only with WEP encryption - it's the only option from condo-supplied Wifi), I would hope to improve my security by chan...
Hi minions08,
Thanks for your prompt (and informative) response. I was able to access the mywifiext URL and I found the link for changing the wireless settings. But it raised a couple more questions and I'm reluctant to mess up my extender until I'm more comfortable with their answers. I'd appreciate it if you (or anyone) could elaborate a bit further:
1. Assuming that changing the extender's encryption from WEP to WPA or WPA2 is successful, will it afford me any additional security from hackers, or is the weak link still the primary network, which must remain as WEP-encrypted? In other words, since the data flowing through the extender must first come through the WEP router, is there any advantage to changing the extender's encryption level?
2. If I change the extender's encryption from WEP to WPA or WPA2, must I keep the same passphrase as that of the router (as I had to when first set up - see note below), or can I assign any arbitrary passphrase to the extender?
(Note: In order to initially extend the primary WEP router, I had no choice but to use identical "26hex" passphrases for both the router and the extender to make it work - apparently with WEP encryption, using different passphrases and/or using the router's original Ascii passphrase are not options - and not following this rule consistently resulted in failure. See my 6/22 post entitled "Limited WN2500RP Success - Help?")
Thanks for your prompt (and informative) response. I was able to access the mywifiext URL and I found the link for changing the wireless settings. But it raised a couple more questions and I'm reluctant to mess up my extender until I'm more comfortable with their answers. I'd appreciate it if you (or anyone) could elaborate a bit further:
1. Assuming that changing the extender's encryption from WEP to WPA or WPA2 is successful, will it afford me any additional security from hackers, or is the weak link still the primary network, which must remain as WEP-encrypted? In other words, since the data flowing through the extender must first come through the WEP router, is there any advantage to changing the extender's encryption level?
2. If I change the extender's encryption from WEP to WPA or WPA2, must I keep the same passphrase as that of the router (as I had to when first set up - see note below), or can I assign any arbitrary passphrase to the extender?
(Note: In order to initially extend the primary WEP router, I had no choice but to use identical "26hex" passphrases for both the router and the extender to make it work - apparently with WEP encryption, using different passphrases and/or using the router's original Ascii passphrase are not options - and not following this rule consistently resulted in failure. See my 6/22 post entitled "Limited WN2500RP Success - Help?")