I've known for a long time that having my wireless network "protected" by WEP wasn't particularly safe. I knew that someone in the street could grab half-an-hour of my traffic and then use a free program from the web to delve through that traffic to get access.

But this is Finland; I live in a quiet residential area with only a few neighbours and so all I did was to pull out the plug to the wireless router and use the desktop when I accessed my bank.

But then I bought the Mac and it lists all the wireless networks it can find. I bought a book on the Mac and it suggested a free program to give even more information. I installed that and now I knew that one neighbour (slightly further away from the others probably, as it is a weaker signal) had a completely open wireless network; several had WEP and one or two had WPA.

So I wondered and did a quick Google search.

That led me to Georg Ou's article here

http://www.lanarchitect.net/Articles/Wireless/SecurityRating/

which says newer techniques can break WEP in minutes.

Well I might spot a guy with a computer sitting in a car for 30 mins, but 5 mins - no chance. It was about time I did something.

The first thing was to see if my wireless router already had WPA support. Surely not, as if it had I'd have used it when I did the installation.

Well, I have one from D-Link and I quickly found (via a link in their most asked questions section) the note that Revision 2 of my model has WPA support. Do I have Revision 2 ? Who knows - it doesn't say in the manual.

So I go to look (good job I still have the manual as that appears to be the only place where I have written the password for accessing it down). I access the router with the standard 192.168.0.1 URL for D-Link and the password doesn't work - ooops ... I then discover that 192.168.0.1 is actually my Ethernet router (also from D-Link) and I try 192.168.0.2 and that password and now it works.

I still can't find if it's revision 2 but it obviously is because there's a WPA option.

So I select that. Write an even longer password than before. Write it again only in the D-Link manual (!) and press OK a couple of times and head off downstairs to set-up the Mac and the Vista portables to access this revised wireless device.

The Mac is no problem at all. It tells me I've changed it; asks me for the new password and that's it. Done.

The Vista refuses to access and it takes an awful lot of (intelligent(?)) messing about before I find a place where I can amend the settings.

The problem is here (in the Vista machine) that there are several (4) WPA options each of which can be either TKIP or AES mode. I probably try 6 of the 8 possible options before I hit the one that works. (Which turns out to be WPA Personal + TKIP which according to the security article (see above) is the minimum I need to have [AES would be better, it seems - the article says that is "rock-solid" whereas "TKIP may be under attack in the near future"])

Anyway the motto of all this is that if you are running WEP on you wireless router, first check whether that same router supports WPA and change it. If not think of getting a new wireless router and if you do make sure that new router has WPA AES support to avoid the need to buy yet another new model when TKIP has been cracked.

P.S. Having that unprotected access point in the neighbourhood is something of a mixed blessing. If my wife upstairs pulls out the plug on my wireless access point (to access her bank!) then the Mac just switches automatically to the only other access point it can access (namely the unprotected one)and the only visible sign of this is a minute scrolling bar at the top-right of the screen with the new name. So my browsing gets slightly slower (and possibly becomes illegal) and as far as I can see if she then plugs my wireless router back in, the Mac doesn't switch back because of course as far as it is concerned it is still connected (to that unprotected network). It's simple to switch back but it needs to be done.