Quick setup guide for the Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless Router

  1. Plug in your Linksys router's "WAN" port into your Cable or DSL modem's Ethernet port
  2. Plug in your PC in to any switch port in the back 1, 2, 3, or 4.  Do not plug it into the "Uplink" port if you have one.
  3. Open up your Internet Explorer browser and type in "http://192.168.1.1" and hit "ENTER"
  4. Leave the "Username" blank and enter "admin" for the password and you will see the following page.
  6. If you're using Cable broadband, chances are that you will need to set the WAN connection type to "Obtain an IP automatically"
  7. If you're using DSL as shown in the example above, you'll probably have to select PPPoE and fill in a username and password.
  8. If your Cable or DSL provider gave you a static IP address, select "Static IP" and fill in the IP information your ISP provided.
  9. Fill in something that describes your wireless LAN in the "SSID:" field under the "Wireless:" section.  In my home, I use "G-Home" but you can use anything simple.  Remember this because you'll be browsing for this later under Windows XP.
  10. Change the channel to 1 or 11.  Channel 6 is the default channel and there my be lots of users on that channel already.
  11. Select "Mandatory" for WEP and then click on the "WEP Key Settings" button to see the following window.
  13. Choose 128 bit
  14. Put a bunch of stuff in the "Passpharase:" field and click on the "Generate" button
  15. Hit the "Apply" button.
  16. Highlight and select all of the contents of the "key:" field i.e. "30B275E......" and hit "CTRL-C" to copy it to the clipboard.
  17. Create a new text file on the PC you intend to do Wireless networking with and paste the contents of the key into that file by hitting "CTRL-V" after you've opened up that text file.
  18. Now close the "WEP Key Setting" window and then hit the "Apply" button on the main setup page.  Once that is done, you may close your web browser.

 

Windows XP client side setup

  1. Insert or turn on your Wi-Fi adapter in your PC with at least Windows XP running at least Service Pack 1.
  2. Make sure that you have "Show icon" turned on for your Wireless LAN adapter as shown here under it's properties.
  4. Right click on the Wi-Fi connection indicator in your System Tray and hit "view available networks".
  6. Select your network, it should show you the Wireless LAN with the name you entered under SSID.  In my case, I had my SSID in my Linksys set to "G-Home".
  7. Uncheck "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication" and then paste in the 26 character hexadecimal WEP key in both blanks to confirm.
  9. Hit connect and you're done!  Once you're connected the first time, Windows XP w/SP1 will remember that connection forever and you'll never have to enter or paste in the WEP key again.  If you loose the WEP key, you can always repeat this whole process while connected by wire.
  10. To confirm you can double click on the System Tray icon for your Wireless LAN Adapter.  You should see something like the following.  Note that you should see green bars.
  12. Click on the "Support" tab and you should see the following.  Note that "192.168.1.x" is the default IP and DHCP scheme for Linksys routers.  If you see an IP that reads "169.254.x.x" or something like that, you're not connected to anything.  All 169.254 IP addresses are randomly made up and are usually worthless.

 

George Ou
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