Authentication Methods

1. Open System (No Authentication)
2. Shared Key
3. WPA-Personal
4. WPA2-Personal
5. WPA-Auto-Personal
6. WPA-Enterprise (For Company's)
7. WPA2-Enterprise (For Company's)
8. WPA-Auto-Enterprise (For Company's)
9. Radius with 802.1x (For Company's)

As of 2012 WPA2-Personal is the best. All home routers should be set to this. A Shared Pass Phrase must be set on the router and supplied by each client. Encryption uses AES CCMP (Not TKIP as in WPA).

If and ONLY if you have some old device that won't connect then you should use WPA-Auto-Personal. WPA can only use wireless G Speeds. Some recommend setting up a separate WAP to support older clients.

Wireless Router N Speeds

Wireless Routers have the following N speeds in their advertising: N300, N450, N600, N750, N900. Great Link I got this info from. My RT-N15 is an N300 Router. My RT-N66U is an N900 Router.

We also have this concept of mimo streams. single-stream (max 150 per Band), dual-stream (max 300 Per Band), and three-stream (max 450 per band). I think each antenna can broadcast a different stream at a different angle to bounce off a different wall while using the same 20MHZ channel bandwidth. So this triple streaming has nothing to do with Channel Bonding.

So I think my RT-N15 is a dual-stream 2.4GHZ N300 Radio WAP and can do max 130 (20MHZ Single Channel) / 300 (40MHZ Channel Bonding). There is no separate radio for a 5 GHZ band. In single channel Mode inssider reports max rate of 144, not 130? In 40MHZ Channel Bonding Mode I still see Max Rate of 144.

My RT-N66U is a triple stream 2.4GHZ/5GHZ N900 (dual) Radio and can do max 217 (20MHZ Single Channel) / 450 (40MHZ Channel Bonding). There is a separate radio for the 5 GHZ band. While this radio can be active while the 2.4GHZ radio is active I do not think a single client can combine data from both spectrums at the same time. Hence the max 450 and not max 900. In inssider is see max rate of 216.

Most laptops, wireless phones, video game systems, etc. only connect through the 2.4 GHZ band. To take advantage of three streams, and/or 5ghz band you need to buy newer nics. For example this one is 30 bucks at amazon now http://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Wireless-Adapter-802-11a-RNWD-N9003PCe/dp/B009VKON0S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1360206397&sr=8-2&keywords=n900+pci+express. Here a mini pci express card for a laptop that is dual band three stream. http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Ultimate-633ANHMW-802-11n-Adapter/dp/B0038A9HSK/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1360210110&sr=1-2&keywords=mini+pci+express+wireless+card+5ghz

Wireless Channel Bonding

802.11a/n supports Wireless Channel Bonding. Not to be confused with Dual band which indicates support for both 5GHZ spectrum (wireless a) and 2.4GHZ spectrum (wireless b/g/n). As the last post points out channels sets in 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4GHZ n space each use about 20MHZ of spectrum each. My older RT-N15 WAP supports channel bonding using two adjacent channel sets (40MHZ). This is why in inssider we see a 5+9 and for our neighbors a 10+6. My newer RT-N66U dual band WAP also supports channel bonding but it seems to only use one channel set from the 2.4GHZ spectrum (at least according to inssider). From what I've read channel bonding works best when there is no interference and the 5GHZ address space is less crowded. This requires a nic with an a radio, dual band client wireless nics. None of my wireless nics on my laptops seem to connect in the 5GHZ space. In the Router Home Page we can see a channel bandwidth setting of 20MHZ or 20/40MHZ. The 20/40MHZ setting in the router web page enables channel bonding. In some cases Channel Bonding can even hurt performance, see here. Another thing to keep in mind is that connectivity in the 5GHZ address space has a much shorter range than the 2.4 GHZ address space, however it can transmit much more data when it works. It seems wireless channel bonding (40MHZ) can only be used with adjacent channels. We cannot for example combine one 20MHZ channel from 2.4 GHZ spectrum and one channel from 5 GHZ spectrum.

WLAN Channels

Most like me leave the wifi channel at auto. From what I am reading we can get better performance by selecting a channel. The following page has some info on channels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels The thing that confuses me is it best to pick from 1, 6, or 11 OR 1, 5, 9 or 13? I mean who uses wireless B anymore? The following link has a post half way down the page that explains it. http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=7415. We don't realty know if our neighbors are using B. If they are then only 1, 6, 11 are safe. If we all stopped supporting B then 1, 5, 9 or 13 would be best.

There are a few ways we can detect what channels are being used (ours and our neighbors). From cmd prompt on windows 7 we can see channels using the following command

netsh wlan show all

The WLAN Autoconfig service needs to be running to make this work and we need to have a wireless card. So run it from a laptop with wireless. On my Dell Laptop the Dell Wireless LAN Card Utility has a Site Monitor Tab that Lists Channels and Signals. Yet another option is to download inSSIDer. The funny thing to me is none of the tools seem to agree on what is the next strongest wifi signal strength. From my readings I and all my neighbors seem to like 1 most. 11 Next. No one is using 6. The thing is the most important factor is not signal strength it is use. If someone is streaming video on channel 1 we want to switch to channel 6 or 11. The problem is we can't detect use directly. We can only detect signal strength. Still with this information if we find no one on channel 6 then we should use it.

I have tested more and noticed that neither of my WAP routers stick to a set channel on auto, so all of this information on the internet must assume really old equipment. My RT-N66U moved it self to channel 6. My RT-N15 has also adjusted itself on the fly to an area with less channel activity. They both must have the same capability inssider has to detect what channels are in use.

Adding LAN Ports

I have an old Asus RT-N15 Router sitting around doing nothing and was thinking of setting it up in the living room to add more LAN ports and to improve wifi reception as a 2nd AP (Access Point) SmallNetBuilder is a Good site and has good links for subnetting a 2nd router. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-basics/30740-how-to-use-a-router-to-add-network-ports?start=1 It turns out in my Administration Tab I can change it from Home Gateway to Access Point. In Access Point mode, four LAN ports in the RT-N15 and other wireless devices are set up in the same local area network. The WAN related functions are not supported in this mode. In this mode, NAT is disabled and four LAN ports in the RT-N15 and other wireless devices are bridged together. In the Manual it mentions that even the WAN port will be modified to work like a LAN port. This should prevent the need for another subnet. I think all I will need is a static IP so I can always remote into this device.

MAC ADDRESS

MAC (Media Access Control) aka Hardware Address is burned into every ethernet NIC.
48 bits (6 bytes in Hex).

MAC Fields

Bit Range	Field Name	Decimal	Hex	Info
47 (1 Bit)	Individual/Group (Broadcast)	0		1 Indicates this MAC Address is a Broadcast or Multicast Address 0 Means this is a Device Address.
46 (1 Bit)	Global/Local OUI	0		1 Indicates this is a locally governed OUI Address 0 Globally Administered IEEE OUI Address.
45-24 (22 Bits)	OUI (Organizationlly Unique Identifier)	0	0	Company ID. Assigned by IEEE.
23-0 (24 Bits)	Vendor/Maufacturer Assigned ID	0	0	Usually NIC SN.

Link to lookup OUI at IEEE
http://standards.ieee.org/develop/regauth/oui/public.html

Ethernet Cable

Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP). The more twists the less cross talk.
In 56A Pins 1 and 2 have green in them.
In 56B Pins 1 and 2 have Orange in them.
If the colors on one side of the cable are in different order than other side, then we have a crossover cable as apposed to straight thru cable. My home routers all have Smart Sense technology so a crossover cable is not necessary to connect WAN ports. Crossover cables are usually used to connect switches/routers or workstations directly without the use of a router.