If you have an Apple computer using an airport extreme card and want to connect it to your wireless Linksys router using WEP, you”ll be surprised that it is not as difficult as you may think. Initially when I was trying to get my iMac connected to my wireless Linksys router I was running into difficulties. After searching around on the Internet and saw some ways that other people suggested, but when I tried them, none seemed to work for me. We will start by assuming you already have your Linksys router configured with your IP address or DHCP if you”re using DHCP. We are strictly going to focus on getting WEP and MAC address filtering to work.’, ‘First you need to log into your Linksys router. Then click on the wireless tab of your navigation within the router”s setup page. Next click on the Wireless MAC Filter tab. Once you are there, you need to find out your MAC address of the Apple computer you want to connect to your Linksys network, so you can minimize your web browser. Now within your Apple computer go to your system profiler. To do this you simply click on the apple symbol in the upper left-hand side of your desktop. Now you click on About this Mac. Then a little window will open showing Software Update and More Info. Click on the More Info button. Now you will see a screen that shows everything installed in your Mac. We need to click on Network. When you are there you should see Ethernet Address. That shows you your MAC address. Write that down or you can copy it and past it into a text document. Now close out of your system profiler and go back to your Linksys router configuration webpage. You should already be at the Wireless MAC Filter page. To configure this you simply click on the enable radio button. Next you want to make sure you Permit only PCs listed to access the wireless network radio button is checked. Now you click on the Edit MAC Filter List button. A little window should pop up. You either type your MAC address in there or copy it and paste it from the text document you created, which ever way you copied down your MAC address. Be sure to click on Save Settings followed by Continue to bring you back to your router configuration utility. Now you have enabled MAC address filtering on your router.
The next step is to configure WEP. WEP stands for wired equivalent privacy. This means your wireless connection being transmitted through the air is going to be encrypted giving it virtually the same amount of security as having an Ethernet cable plugged into your Apple computer to your router. To do this you click on the wireless security tab of your router”s configuration utility webpage. Once you are there you need to change your Security Mode to utilize WEP. Now you can use the drop down menu to choose WEP 128 bits 26 HEX digits. Next you choose what transmit key you would like to use. By default it is set to 1. Now you type in a Passphrase. This phrase is going to be what is used to generate your wireless key. You can type anything you want in here. Once you have typed in your passphrase you click on the Generate button. Now you will see 4 keys were generated below. Above you chose what key you wanted to use so now you copy the corresponding key and either write it down or copy and paste it into a text document. Once you”ve got your key you can click on Save Settings and then followed by Continue. As of right now you should not have a wireless connection available anymore. To reestablish your wireless connection you need to open the System Preferences on your Apple computer. Once you are in your System Preferences, click on Network. Now you should see a screen that shows you Location, Show, and then your Airport network connection below. Click on the Airport connection and then click the Configure button at the bottom of the screen. Once there, you should see where it says By Default Join. Use the drop down menu and choose A Specified Network. Now you will have to type in your network name and then for the password, either type in the network key you copied before or type it in. Now you can click Show Airport status in the menu bar to ensure there is a check mark next to it and then click the apply button. Now you should see a signal in the upper right hand side of your screen for your airport network. This means that provided you configured everything else correctly in your router, you should be up and running. Congratulations, you have just added more security to your wireless network and you have gotten your Apple computer connected to your Linksys router.