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I've already got a little wireless home network, with just one router serving as both DHCP and internet access gateway for home wi-fi devices. The router and devices are set up manually, the way I want them (encryption, passwords etc).

Now, I want to get myself a wi-fi enabled printer. The manual states that setting it up is as easy as pressing the WPS button at the same time on both the printer and the router.
My router does have this button.
However, having read up a bit on how WPS works, I'm somewhat scared to press the WPS button as I now have an impression it will sort of cancel out my settings and pull some auto-created stuff instead. This would ruine my existing setup, and not all of my devices have a WPS button.

So, could anyone explain please, what exactly will the WPS button do if I press it in an already-setup network? Will it just cleverly pass my settings to the new device, or will it do something I'd prefer it to not do?

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Don't worry, WPS will just pull your router's wireless settings (ie. the WPA passphrase) into your WiFi-enabled printer. :-)

The bad news is that WPS comes with several methods (the push-button method + a few other methods) including one that has recently been completely broken. So if you don't deactivate the WPS functionality on your router, your network can be hacked in just a few hours of brute force attack.

So here's my advice: use WPS (the push-button method) to configure your printer, then immediately deactivate WPS on your router and only activate it when you need it.

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