What Is The Use Of WPS Button In Any Router – The Features You Don’t Know Yet !!

We all are familiar with the working of a wifi router. A Router is basically an access point that allows you to connect your devices to the home internet securely . Now there are many ways to connect your home devices wirelessly to a wifi router quickly .

In this post will explore the alternate and indeed the other popular way of connecting your device to any wifi router without entering any password i.e. by using the WPS button on a router .

The most common way is to connect via WPA2 personal security protocol that is by entering the encryption key (wifi network password) in your device (as we do usually) .

WPS method is generally not so common among the users. Hence it is utmost important to understand the basics and then the proper way of securely connecting any device to the internet by using the WPS button present in the router.

What Is this WPS button On A WiFi Router ?

WPS is a short form for WiFi protected setup . This precisely offers an easy way to connect any device to the home WiFi router without entering any password. You might have seen many videos in YouTube or any online media, about the secrets of connecting any device without entering password or also the headline i.e. “how to hack anyone’s WiFi router”.

Let me tell you that there is no hack or magic behind those tricks, they all basically explain the same thing that is the WPS button feature present on the router.

As the name suggest it is a protected setup standard . This simply means that it is a wireless network standard that will assist in making a secure connection between any Router and a wireless device quickly.

WPS button on a router precisely provides easiest solution to connect to any WiFi router by just pressing a WPS button present on the physical router. Here no need to give any encryption key for WiFi password manually.

However in recent years it has been found that this WPS feature on the router has been facing some major security flaws and this will be discussed later in this post.

Why To Use WPS Push Button On Router Instead Of Using The WPA2 Encryption Method ?

Now the next question which may come to your mind will be, then why to use this WPS button on router instead of putting the manual encryption key which we usually do .

So in this section we’ll see some of the the situations/cases wherein , using the WPS button on the router is much more meaningful and easy to use as compared to the the normal WPA2 enabled encryption key on the device.

So below are some of the cases where the WPS button will be a much superior option than the normal password method :

1. The first situation is , some friends or some unknown person visit your house . And you don’t really want to share the the confidential WiFi password to them. In this case it is much advisable to give them the WPS pin or to use the WPS push button and allow them to access your home wifi network in their device.

2. Secondly the WPS  feature offers convenience !! . Yes , the WPS button offers a much more convenient way to connect to any WiFi router than manually entering the encryption key/wifi password every time in any device .

3. Many times it is common for us to forget our complex WiFi password. It may happen that your fully configure a router but then you forget the WiFi password. And you don’t want to access the router control panel in the laptop. So now what can you do?

You can easily use the WPS push button to enable the WiFi network in your device without putting any password whatsoever .

In the nutshell , we can say that the WPS push button offers a very easy and simple way to connect any device wirelessly to any Wi-Fi router without entering any security key.

How To Enable WPS Button On The Router?

WPS works only for wireless networks that implements a password that is encrypted with the wpa / wpa2 personal security protocols. WPS doesn’t work on the network that are using deprecated WEP security.

In order to connect any device using WPS , you have to follow either of the two ways given below:

1. Firstly you can push the WPS button present on a router. Now once you push the button just wait and hold it for few seconds until the WPS indicator starts blinking in your WiFi router.

Once you are in WPS protocol mode, go to the wireless network settings in your device.In case of any phone just go to the WiFi networks available , now tap on the more or the other configuration option. Here you can see the WPS push button option .

You just need to enable this option in your mobile and then it will automatically connect to the WiFi network without entering any password.

If you have any other device like any printer or camera having the wireless connectivity feature, they may already have their own physical WPS button. In order to connect those devices to your wireless router, just press the WPS button on your printer and also on a router.

Once pressed , then the WPS automatically sends the network password and these devices connect to it and it does remember it for future use. 

You can easily locate the WPS button by seeing small Padlock icon present on the router and on any wireless device that you want to connect.

The WPS mode will be on for approximately 2 minutes . In this duration you have to connect the devices security to this WiFi network. Otherwise you may have to again push the WPS button to activate the WPS mode on the router.

In phone follow the below path to enable WPS feature :

Settings –> Wifi settings —> More / Additional wifi settings —-> Tap on WPS Push button/WPS Pin 

Note : depending upon the mobile device , the above options name might be different . 

2. Now the second way is to connect your device by using the WPS pin. Once you open the router configuration panel in your desktop / laptop , you can see the WPS option present on the left side.

Just click on it and then on the WPS settings screen you can see the various options. Firstly you have to make sure that the WPS option is enabled. Now you can see the WPS pin displayed on the screen. Note this WPS pin, you have to give your friend this pin to enter if you choose the WPS pin option in the mobile.

Do remember to reset this WPS pin after every use as a best practice. It will make your network more secure.Thus WPS offers a unique way to connect to the Wi-Fi router without remembering the complicated encryption key / WiFi passwords.

How To Configure The WPS Pin Of The Router?

Firstly you need to access the router configuration panel in your browser by putting the router default IP address , in our case we are using the TP link WiFi router . So we’ll put the default TP link IP address in the URL space to open the router control panel.

Now enter the default username and password. Now on the left side you can see the WPS link click on it to open the WPS at is WiFi protected setup Screen.

From here you can easily disable/enable the WPS pin and also configure the WPS pin / create a new pin for restoring the old pin .  Moreover , in this page you can even add new devices directly to the WPS connected devices.

That’s it , now you can just  go ahead and share this pin to anyone you want to share you WiFi network with .The 8 digit pin is fa easier to remember than the complex passwords . (Isn’t it ?)

Why Not To Use WPS Button On The Router / WPS Vulnerabilities !!

Till now we have seen the various aspects and the typical ways of connecting any device to your WiFi router using WPS push button. As said earlier this WPS feature is not at all completely secure . In many recent studies, it has been found that the WPS standard is prone to the brute force attack.

In this attack mainly the hacker / attacker tries to you guess the eight digit WPS pin. It hardly takes 4 to 10 hours to crack WPS pin completely using a brute force technique based software.

This intrusion software mainly deploys the different permutations and combinations to guess the different possible sequence of the 8 digit WPS pin. Once the attacker retrieve/hacked the pin, you may face denial of service or network connection failures from your end.

Hence , having a good long password with the WPA2 based encryption standard is much recommended to secure your WiFi networks. Strong encryption key is indeed required if your router is few years old and hasn’t been updated with any latest firmware updates recently.

What Exactly Is This Brute Force Attack In WPS Pin Of The Router ?

Brute force is basically an algorithm which is implemented using a software. It typically employs the trial and error method used to decode any encryption key such as WiFi passwords or any confidential key. The software will eventually try all the possible combinations of numeric characters.

In case of the WPS pin we have the finite 8 numeric characters. Thus with the brute force technique it is highly possible to breach and to crack any WPS based encryption standard .

In our case we have WPS standard based router. Although this technique might be time-consuming approach, but still the security breach is imminent.

WPS Button On The Router Feature – Final Conclusion !!

The WPS push button functionality undoubtedly makes our life easier , as we don’t required to remember complex passwords anymore. But at the same time it is much more prone to security beach like the brute force attack.

Thus it is much recommended to use the normal WPA / WPA2 network configuration standard where we usually put the complex encryption key in our devices to connect to the Wi-Fi network.

At the same time it is worth noting that if you don’t really want to share the WiFi password, you can go ahead and use the WPS push button functionality. Just push the WPS button and within 2 minutes connect the device to the WiFi home network. That’s it .

Hope you really like this post . Stay tuned for more interesting stuff in this series .