Technology has moved on so much so quickly that, even though most people now use the Internet at home and on the move, there are so many things they do not really understand about how it works. It is true that most people are not really interested in knowing how things work they just want them to work. However, it is our experience that the basics really helps users to avoid frustration when things go wrong (and no matter how much technology advances things will always go wrong sometimes). Some people even struggle with the most basic terminology. But everyone knows what a router is. How it works or worked and what they are different components do is a different kettle of fish, as it were. If you go to the area of your room, house, or office where your router is located and looked at it, would you be able to tell me what all those flashing lights mean? You will notice the acronym WPS (You might have already noticed it before and that is why you are reading this article). Could you tell me what this acronym stands for and what the WPS does? Probably not, right?
Do not worry, however, this article is not meant to test you on your Internet knowledge, we were just trying to make a simple point in our introduction. In that very simple point is that most people do not know or understand some of the basics of how the Internet works, even though it is such a big part of most people’s everyday lives whether at home or at work.
In this article will not only tell you what the acronym WPS on the router stands for but also like really means, what he does, and how it works. And, please, do not worry if you do not consider yourself to be overly technically savvy. We will try our best to explain all of this in a really easy way to understand no matter what your current level of knowledge maybe. We really want you to learn something from reading this. The furthest thing from our mind would be to make you feel bad about not knowing something that most people do not know anyway. The point is to make your Internet user experience better, more enjoyable, and a lot less frustrating.
WP… What?
The afternoon WPS stands for Wi-Fi Protected Set-Up. Yes, you are probably realizing that now no wind what the acronym stands for just not really tell you much about what it actually means or what it does. So let us go into it with a little bit more detail.
Most people do not really need to know why WPS is but, you might have noticed it either on your router (as we pointed out before just by looking at it) or, if you configured a router manually by yourself you would have noticed it when doing so. The term WPS comes up in different menus often.
So what is it? The purpose of this Wi-Fi protected set up is to help establish the connection between the router and any wireless devices using the Wi-Fi network has been transmitted by that router easier than they would be otherwise (without WPS).
The WPS, however, only works for certain networks. For WPS to actually work the wireless networks would need to have either what is known as a WPA personal or a WPA 2 personal. In other words, if the wireless network uses WEP security then WPS will not be able to support it.
If you have set up of router yourself if you would know that you can only set up a network once you have picked one out from its name and you have entered the correct password for it. If you want to slightly more technical explanation, we could say that you need an SSID (network name) and a WPA-PSK Key (password).
WPS was created to make using Wi-Fi is your and to encourage its usage. The organization behind is called the Wi-Fi alliance. It is a totally non-for profit, and its members include the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and many other large and small technology companies.
How do use WPS?
So, now that you know a little bit more about what WPS stands for and what it does it might be a good time to show you how you can actually use it when setting up a wireless connection.
You can use a WPS to set up a wireless connection as long as you meet the necessary conditions (if you want to know about these are then should really go back to the previous section as that is where we explained it). As long as you do, you will be able to set up the connection using it.
There are actually different ways of doing this but in this section, we will go over the steps you will need to follow in order to do so in the easiest and most convenient way possible.
“I love a hotel that offers Wi-Fi Internet access, especially if it’s free. But I never access sensitive information, like my bank account or an online shopping site that stores my credit card information, on a public Wi-Fi connection.” – Jean Chatzky
The first thing that you will need to do is to head over to your router and look at the back. You need to do this in order to find the WPS button. This is normally located at the back next to or at least quite near the on and off button. So be very careful because you will need to press the WPS button and you certainly do not want to confuse it with the on and off button and end up turning your router off. If you make that easy mistake simply press the on and off button again and wait for the rider to be fully turned on, which may take a few moments. As long as your riders on press the WPS button on your router.
Turning on the WPS button will prompt your router to search any available devices to connect to.
The second thing you will need to do is to grab whichever device you want to connect, for example, your tablet, your smart phone, or your laptop computer. Go into your network settings and choose the network you look like your device to connect to. Because the WPS button has been turned on your device will automatically connect to the wireless network. So, you should be careful when you do this because it means that anybody within range will also be able to connect to your wireless network without entering the correct password. It is, of course, up to you when and how you do this and we do leave it up to you, we are simply telling you how to use this but we’re not telling you to actually use it or when to do so.
Another way of using WPS is when you use wireless printers. These kinds of printers are very convenient because they’re very easy to use and you do not have to keep them right next to your computer or any other device you would like to print from. So for people who live in small apartments in other places where it might not be easy or actually feasible to have a computer and a printer joined by a wire, they are a great solution. So turning on WPS by pressing the WPS button on your router will also allow you to connect your wireless printer to the network. The best thing about this is that you will only need to do it once because once your wireless printer has been connected to your network it will remember and you will not need to enable WPS again for this purpose.
The next thing that you can do it slightly more complex they ever want to be able to do it. If your router has a WPS there will be an automatic PIN attached to it. This number would have digits and you can find out what it is by checking the configuration website. So you can enable the WPS with this PIN. How? Well, if you are using any device the desk not come with a WPS button but has a WPS support network you will be able to connect to it by entering in the PIN when prompted to do so.
The last method that we could show you is similar to the previous one. For any devices without a WPS button like the ones we just discussed, you can go online and check the configuration panel (again, this need some prior technical knowledge but if you are setting up a router we assume you would at least know this). Once you are in the configuration panel for your router you can enter the WPS PIN (remember that this number should have eight digits). If you enter this number in the configuration panel you should be able to add the device you want to your wireless network.
We have tried to make this article is easy to follow and as full of information as possible. Of course, there is a lot more that could be said about WPS but the purpose of this tutorial was just to tell you what it stands for and what it does.
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