How to fix a frequently disconnecting WLAN connection

If everything would go as planned, setting up a new WLAN (Wireless LAN) connection at home would required something like simple four steps. Well, if you don't care about security, then it might be so. But if I'm going to set somebody's WLAN connection up, I don't want to leave it unsecured, even if it is a seldomly used home connection.

Now, I needed to setup one such connection few days ago, and the basic setup was pretty simple. But, once I enable security, the connection started to run into problems: the connection simply disconnected every 10 minutes.

As I'm no wireless connection expert (but could say I know at least something about IT), I couldn't immediately figure out the reason. But, since the disconnections were periodic and frequent, it was easy to conclude that some settings had gone wild. And indeed it had.

To fix this problem with the given ZyXel WLAN/DSL modem, I simply needed to go to the properties of the wireless connection in Windows XP, select Advanced properties, and then go to this dialog box tab:

From here, I unchecked the "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network", and the interruptions and connection failures stopped. And yes, the said connection uses WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), but not yet WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access).