Re: Wireless network w/ SBS

In article <ep7ZM$G$GHA.748@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

The client cards do need to support WPA. If you don't see it as a choice,
check for driver updates.

If you have Intel wireless NICs, you may find a more recent driver on the
Intel site than what the PC manufacturer offers. Especially for laptops,
I'd only use the Intel driver ahead of the most recent one from the system
builder if you had to do that to get a feature you need.

To add to Dave's comments ... Windows XP SP2 provides "supplicant" (operating
system) support for WPA. The NIC drivers and firmware must also support WPA.

If you want to use the best encryption option (AES), the NIC must have a
"hardware assist". Many NICs less than 2 years old have this, but you need to
verify - their documentation should say whether they have AES support or not.

If AES is not available, you can use the slightly less secure TKIP encryption,
which only requires firmware and driver support. However, since TKIP does not
take advantage of the specialized hardware used with AES, a TKIP-encrypted
network is actually slightly (~10%) slower and somewhat less secure than an
AES-encrypted network.

And, keep in mind that whatever encryption option you choose, you MUST use that
end-to-end: WAP, NICs, and software configuration. You cannot mix AES and
TKIP.

-- Owen Williams [SBS MVP]
.

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