MN-700 not WPA capable

Please address the following, from a recent PCWorld
article. Is it true that WPA is not presently supported
between the MN700 and MN720 or MN710? Why the pitiful
throughput?

"The worst offender in improperly representing
certification was Microsoft. Its MN-700 access point/router
displays the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification label for WPA
prominently on the box, but the device failed to establish
a WPA connection with any of six 802.11g wireless PC Cards
(including Microsoft's own MN-720 model) and with six of
eight tested notebooks using integrated 11g wireless. Not
all of these notebooks and cards were certified for WPA,
but all connected with several other WPA-enabled routers.

Wi-Fi Alliance representatives say the Alliance certified
the MN-700 for the 802.11b and 802.11g standards with
security turned off. Spokesperson Brian Grimm says the
Alliance will contact Microsoft about updating its labeling.

Microsoft announced in May that it was leaving the wireless
networking business, but it intends to continue supporting
its products. A spokesperson says that the company plans to
issue a patch enabling WPA in July, although throughput
will drop to about 7 megabits per second--well below the
minimum 12 to 14 mbps that industry experts estimate users
should expect with devices that have WPA enabled."

"PCWorld DAVE" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:2691a01c46182$5a097af0$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Please address the following, from a recent PCWorld
> article. Is it true that WPA is not presently supported
> between the MN700 and MN720 or MN710? Why the pitiful
> throughput?

I have not seen this article(A link would be nice).

I am running a home network with an MN700 and a MN720 connected wirelessly.
As far as I can tell, WPA/PKIP works fine with the following caveats-It only
works with
a fully updated Windows XP(no other versions of Windows are supported as far
as I know) and it is
not set up with the tools that come along with the router or wireless card(I
used Internet
Explorer to set up the router and just XP to set up the laptop).

Throughput is about 9 Mbps. Can't answer why, although you would expect
throughput to be
lower than without encryption. My understanding is that one of the reasons
WPA was written is so that current
wireless equipment would be able to use better encryption than WEP. It is
not surprising that
throughput would be lower(and different for different routers because of
their different computing
resources). Not happy about the lower throughput, but can live with it,
since it was a very cheap option and I don't
have to transfer large files.

Microsoft has promised a software(driver ?, firmware ?) update in about the
same time frame as XP SP2,
but I don't think the update will change any of the above, it will be
addressing other known bugs. That is, of course,
if it actually appears.

Maybe one of the MVP's knows more.

Hope this helps.

Dick Kistler

The rest of the article is at the following URL, but I
quoted just about all they had to say about MS products.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116630,00.asp

I expect to get less than the full 54mbps theoretical
throughput of 802.11g, especially with WPA enabled. It's
just surprising that MS is so far below the MINIMUM "12 to
14 mbps that industry experts estimate users should expect
with... WPA enabled". I was hoping for a convincing and
credible denial from Microsoft.

I probably will be satisfied with the speed for now and I
can't complain about the firesale prices, only $79 for the
MN-820 (router and PC card) + about $30 for the USB adapter.

As long as I can get secure wireless now, I can wait for
WPA2/802.11i with a coprocessor, offering higher speed next
year. I had been about to deploy, using WEP, when WPA was
announced, but decided to wait long enough for WPA to
mature a little. That's why I was a bit alarmed to see the
PCWorld article shortly after my purchase.

Thanks for your response based upon real-world experience.
It has encouraged me to go ahead and attempt deployment,
although it means upgrading one of my systems from Windows
2000 first.

There is an interesting (free) utility for win 2000 at
http://www.wirelesssecuritycorp.com/...PAAssistant.do

I've used it with a DLink AG660 pccard on a Windows 2000 laptop and
have been very successful connecting to a MN-700. With this setup, I
can use Cisco VPN 4.0.1 and tunnel into my company's corp network and
stay connected as long as I want.

On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 20:43:45 -0700, "Dave"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Thanks for your response based upon real-world experience.
> It has encouraged me to go ahead and attempt deployment,
>although it means upgrading one of my systems from Windows
>2000 first.

--
Barb Bowman
Expert Zone Columnist
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
MS-MVP (Windows)