That’s where WPS comes in, so your visitors can type in an 8-digit PIN instead. However, even if you let your laptop, phone or tablet store the PSK for later, you still have to type in it once.Īnd trying to spell it out phonetically to visitors so they can type it in by hunting-and-pecking on a mobile phone can be frustrating. Indeed, we recommend aiming for a PSK length of least 14, using a mixture of letters, numbers and “wackies” (punctuation), and we suggest that you create an aide memoire, such as “it’s not that hard to remember 17 characters” to represent a password like it'S!TH2RMBR17chs.
That sounds counter-intuitive, because we have regularly advised that your minimum Wi-Fi security level should be Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) with a well-chosen password, known as the Pre-shared Key (PSK). The idea of WPS is to provide a controlled way for someone whom you trust to connect to your Wi-Fi network by typing in just an 8-digit PIN instead of your full wireless password. A Swiss security researcher has found yet more problems with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), a system built into many wireless routers to make it easier for you help guests and visitors to get online.
