4. Wireless Features

Next I wanted to test the device using wireless. Using the remote, I navigated to the options page where I found the setup. When I told it to use wireless instead of wired, it immediately started searching for access points. At the time, I was working on my back porch where my neighbor's wireless signal was stronger than mine. So before I knew it, the device dutifully connected to her unencrypted access point and started scanning her network looking for a server. Oops.

Maybe in some jurisdictions, I would have been arrested for this transgression, or I suppose if my neighbor also had a Squeezebox I might have learned her taste in music, but it was not to be. I quickly backed out and told it to connect to my encrypted access point. The Squeezebox supports both WEP and the more-secure WPA encryption. I use both on my network, so I tried a 128-bit WEP connection. This was all fairly easy to set up, but using a remote to enter 27 hexadecimal characters to form the key is not the most fun thing to do in the world (Figure 5).

Figure 5: WEP Key Entry

Once the device was set up wirelessly, it worked well. Since I was outside at the time, I used the Squeezebox's headphone jack and plugged in my headphones instead of hooking the device up to a stereo. Using it in this mode was a nice change. The display was fully visible outside on my shaded porch, and I had access to a large music collection to play while I worked. To assist in getting a good wireless signal, one of the setup screens contained a signal strength screen (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Signal Strength Screen

This was a nice feature and was handy to use while I was testing. I found that I could use the Squeezebox anywhere in my house, which means its range is pretty good since my access point is all the way down in my basement.