E4200 Wi-Fi protected setup feature [ Edited ]

[Foxtwo]

I would like to purchase the linksys wireless router E4200 but i have one question regarding its Wi-Fi protected setup feature. I would like to manually configure the wireless settings from the manual option of the basic wireless settings of the router web page, in particular i need, for some reasons, to disable the 2.4 GHz radio and i need to set 40 MHz as the channel width of the 5 GHz radio as well as to set the 5 GHz mode to wireless N only mode. I also need to set manually the wpa2 personal option as the encryption method and to set manually a random 63 characters pass phrase. Since i have a bu-ray player and a TV that both support the Wi-Fi protected setup and both are able to handle 5 GHz wireless N signal with 40 MHz channel width, my question is: If, after doing the above manual changes in the wireless basic settings and in the wireless security settings of the router, i try to use the Wi-Fi protected setup function of the router to add the bu-ray player and the TV to the network, does the router change my long 63 characters pass phrase and the other wireless settings that I changed at the beginning to some other values, enabling also the 2.4 GHz radio that i manually disabled?
Thanks a lot

[sabretooth]

Never use the WPS feature, period.  Always set up the router manually like you want. 

[Foxtwo]

Thanks, but that is not an option. I would like to have a specific answer to my specific question. Depending on the answer i will decide whether to buy the router or not.

[gv]

Either you use the WPS feature and let the router configure everything itself or you configure it manually.

There is no benefit adding your blue-ray player or TV with WPS anyway, if you already configured your network manually. Manual configuration gives you far greater control over your wireless network, thus it's far better to set up the SSID and passphrase on your blue-ray instead of relying on the little convenience of the WPS feature to get it connected.

[Foxtwo]

Thanks for the answer. I may agree. The fact is that i need to choose a pass phrase that is 63 ASCII characters long and it's not so easy to input this 63 characters password into the blu-ray player or TV, considering also that the on video keyboard of the TV can't input all the ASCII characters. Now i am using a trendnet wireless router and i added the blu-ray player and the TV through WI-fi protected setup and i didn't have to input my long 63 password into both the blu-ray and the TV, and the TV is using the wpa2 password of the router that contains also ASCII characters that i couldn't input manually in the TV with the on video keyboard.

[gv · Accepted solution]

Well, then don't use a 63 character long password. That doesn't really make your network more secure anyway. The passphrase that long would only make a difference in a brute force attack which is extremely unlikely to happen. Instead an attacker would rather try to break the 256 key which is derived from that passphrase using weaknesses in the protocol.

Thus, if you use WPA2+AES and not TKIP a medium size strong passphrase of maybe 16 characters is usually more then enough. Even for 16 characters a brute force attack against the passphrase is more than unlikely and would take very long to succeed.

[Foxtwo]

I agree. The other option is to use a 64 hexadecimal characters password that, even if long, it can be inputted more easily and even on my TV on video keyboard.

Thanks a lot

[gv]

Does the E4200 take the 64 hex digits key? That would be good. You could use a tool to convert your 63 character passphrase into the corresponding 256 bit key.

[Foxtwo]

Yes It does, It has to because it is part of the WPA standard. If you don't have the router you can try to input 64 hexadecimal characters at http://ui.linksys.com/files/E4200/1.0.00/WL_WPATable.html 

Regards

[gv]

There are a lot of routers out there which don't let you enter the hex key.

Of course, remember, that you should only use a hex key of a passrphase you know. Thus, if you want to use the 63 character passphrase, you could just as well enter the 64 hex digit key instead.

Using a random 64 hex digit key, however, may be a security risk. You may accidentally pick a key which can be mapped from a dictionary word passphrase.

For example, you generate a random key which gets you "ecc9991e3cfb1b117bdbbd00deb407f0232944b56821647e2349139d02fd2bfb" which is the 256 bit key mapped from the passphrase "password' on SSID linksys.