Vista - Wifi not seeing hideen SSID

One of the best bits of advice you can be given when setting up a wireless
router is to hide the SSID (Netgear recommends this) and for quite some time
now, that is exactly what I've done, in addition to MAC address enabling and
WPK WEP security...but on my wifes Sony Vaio laptop running Vista premium,
it will not connect to the Netgear wifi router unless the SSID is visable

Ron

Ron O'Brien wrote:
> One of the best bits of advice you can be given when setting up a wireless
> router is to hide the SSID (Netgear recommends this) and for quite some time
> now, that is exactly what I've done, in addition to MAC address enabling and
> WPK WEP security...but on my wifes Sony Vaio laptop running Vista premium,
> it will not connect to the Netgear wifi router unless the SSID is visable

Actually whoever gave you that advice did not give you the "best bits"
because it is wrong. I don't care if Netgear recommends this. It's wrong.

Hiding your SSID does not deter network scanners at all. It merely makes
your computer constantly shout out "is there a Linksys around?"
publicly. That makes it even easier for a Bad Person to find your
wireless network.

There was an excellent thread about this with a very clear explanation
of why not broadcasting the SSID is foolish in one of the MS Vista
newsgroups this morning. You can do a Google Groups Advanced Search for
something like "hide SSID" and constrain the search to
microsoft.public.windows.vista.* and recent time.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

"Ron O'Brien" <castcall@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:bUADh.7164$Fg4.161@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...
> One of the best bits of advice you can be given when setting up a wireless
> router is to hide the SSID (Netgear recommends this) and for quite some
> time now, that is exactly what I've done, in addition to MAC address
> enabling and WPK WEP security...but on my wifes Sony Vaio laptop running
> Vista premium, it will not connect to the Netgear wifi router unless the
> SSID is visable


In addition to Malke's excellent advice (to go and read my other posting on
this topic in this newsgroup), I would recommend that you read the whole of
this article:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/net...hiddennet.mspx

Read the whole article (it's a very easy read), don't skip down to the piece
that tells you how to unscrew the nuts on your front fork of your bike
without first reading why it's dangerous to ride it that way.

Alun.
~~~~
--
Texas Imperial Software | Web: http://www.wftpd.com/
23921 57th Ave SE | Blog: http://msmvps.com/alunj/
Woodinville WA 98072-8661 | WFTPD, WFTPD Pro are Windows FTP servers.
Fax/Voice +1(425)807-1787 | Try our NEW client software, WFTPD Explorer.

> In addition to Malke's excellent advice (to go and read my other posting on
> this topic in this newsgroup), I would recommend that you read the whole of
> this article:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/net...hiddennet.mspx

May want to throw in reading the 802.11 standards too. That way you'd find
out that hiding the SSID violates the standard, and should, and will, cause
undefined behavior, such as forcibly connecting to rogue APs and not the
legitimate ones.

Thanks all.

Isn't it strange how this industry just can't get it's advice to match. A
part from Netgear suggesting hiding you SSID, I've read three 'security'
articles from well known and qualified technical writers in Computer
Magazines, who have also made this suggestion - although one does say it has
little effect on a determined hacker

Ron

"Cast-it Admin" <cast-it@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:YiVEh.38987$Fm2.27428@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net...
> Isn't it strange how this industry just can't get it's advice to match. A
> part from Netgear suggesting hiding you SSID, I've read three 'security'
> articles from well known and qualified technical writers in Computer
> Magazines, who have also made this suggestion - although one does say it
> has little effect on a determined hacker

There's security experts, and there's "security experts".

You'll soon learn to tell the difference.

Alun.
~~~~
--
Texas Imperial Software | Web: http://www.wftpd.com/
23921 57th Ave SE | Blog: http://msmvps.com/alunj/
Woodinville WA 98072-8661 | WFTPD, WFTPD Pro are Windows FTP servers.
Fax/Voice +1(425)807-1787 | Try our NEW client software, WFTPD Explorer.