- Use strong encryption on your wireless network. At a minimum use WPA-PSK (TKIP). If your devices support WPA-PSK (AES) or WPA2 so much the better.
Windows Connect Now
Vista
Windows Vista Networking Goodies, Part 1: Windows Connect Now - January 2007
Connecting to Wireless Networks with Windows Vista: The Cable Guy, April 2006
Windows XP
Encryption Key
If your wireless access point/router or clients do not support WCN you can easily copy-n-paste the network key by opening the flash drive and navigating to the \Smrtntky\Wsetting.txt file and copying the key to the wireless access point/router or client.
Note that you may need to manually configure your wireless access point/router or client encryption method if you want to use WPA-PSK (AES) or WPA2 if WCN does not give you those encryption methods as an option. WCN will correctly and automatically configure the network SSID and encryption key.
Laptop guidance firewall and network configuration for public wireless hotspots
Vista
Make sure the Vista wireless network type is configured as Public. The following table is from this Cable Guy article.
| Behavior for the Public Location Type |
|
For the Public location type, the
assumption is that the computer is directly connected to the
Internet and therefore exposed to incoming malicious traffic
from the Internet. Because of a possible hostile networking
environment, the following default settings are automatically
configured for networks with the Public location type: • Windows Firewall is turned on • Network discovery is turned off • All forms of file and printer sharing are turned off, including file sharing, printer sharing, public folder sharing, and media sharing If you change these default settings, they will be applied to every network with the Public location type. |
Windows XP
Run a software firewall on your laptop and have it configured for Don't allow exceptions. That way the laptop is protected from incoming probes all the time which is particularly important at public wireless hotspots. The following screen shot is from a Windows XP SP2 computer running the Windows Firewall.
