Installation is done by downloading the installer from WSC's website and running it on every wireless client that will need to access the WSC-Guarded wireless LAN. You'll also need to install the WSC client on one wired machine if you want to take advantage of the Fallback feature (more later). WSC wisely advises getting your WLAN running without encryption first, so that you won't be trying to debug basic wireless setup problems during the WSC Guard installation.

I had no problem with the install on my WinXP laptop, using a BuffaloTechnology WLI-CB-G54 802.11g CardBus client (reviewed here) connected to a Buffalo Tech WBR-G54 802.11g router (reviewed here), both of which were supplied by WSC for use in my evaluation.

The installer first walks you through setting up a WSC Guard account - which is free for the first 30 days - that requires a user name and password to be created. Once your account has been created, another setup wizard launches that guides you through the creation of your protected network(s), each of which also gets a name and password. You next add Access Point(s) to each Network, and finally add members to the newly created network(s). By the way, each Access Point gets a password, which the installer prompts you to change if it detects that an AP is using its default password.

Note that throughout this entire setup process, all you enter is a series of user names and passwords. You don't have to deal with encryption modes, WEP keys, authentication server IP addresses, etc. The setup wizard even automatically opens all the different Windows windows and enters the data needed for the encryption and 802.1x authentication methods used. Of course, it automatically configures the Access point(s), too.

If all goes well, after the installer finishes you'll be greeted with the login screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Login screen
(click on the images for full-sized views)

After you enter the login info and the WSC Guard client successfully connects and authenticates with WSC's server, you'll get a popup in the System Notification area telling you you're connected and the WSC Guard key icon will turn green.

NOTE: Authentication worked fine even though the BuffaloTech wireless router was located behind my network's main router.