2
Last week, while I was at work, a clerk from the IPTV carrier came home to fix a problem with the cable tv service. Upon arriving home, I noticed how he changed my wireless security's username and password. I thought he simply did this to bypass not having me around.
Upon further inspection, I noticed how he also changed my security from WPA2 to gasp basic WPA (!).
What logical reason could there be behind this?
rebelliard
Posted 2011-05-22T00:05:02.043
Reputation: 137
2
It's possible that he needed to connect some sort of equipment that only supports WPA. Do the service personnel from your carrier normally carry some kind of handheld computer for billing/logging? Some older handheld POS systems may not allow WPA2. That said, generally these systems use a cellular connection rather than WiFi so that they'll work anywhere with no fuss. Possibly the tech had a laptop that only supported WPA, although this is very rare in the real world now.
I find it far more likely that the tech needed to hard reset the router for some reason (probably just to diagnose a problem), and when she set it back up for you she just didn't know/didn't care about the difference between WPA and WPA2. As long as all your equipment is modern there should be no problem changing it back. The original-generation Nintendo DS is the only thing I've dealt with in a while that couldn't handle WPA2 (and it goes all out, supporting WEP only).
jcrawfordor
Posted 2011-05-22T00:05:02.043
Reputation: 15 203
1
The reason could be that Windows XP doesn't support WPA2 without a patch from Microsoft.
Maybe he brought a computer running under this OS and tried to connect to your AP using it.
Nicolas
Posted 2011-05-22T00:05:02.043
Reputation: 358