Wi-Fi Technology Forum

WEP security problems

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sirlinus75 - 13/1/03 at 21:38

I am having a great deal of trouble getting my wireless LAN to work reliably with WEP enabled. (Linksys wireless 4 port router, 2 netgear wifi cards) I seem to be following the instructions properly, creating and implementing keys, but on the rare chance I do get a connection and an IP address, it doesn't last very long. I am getting a great signal from both cards. Is there a safe way to use a wireless router/AP without using WEP? Does standard Windows networking come into play when accessing a network whether it's wireless or not? I also wonder if my problem could stem from the fact that I'm using a linksys router and Netgear cards...PLEASE HELP! I'm losing sleep!


chestert - 19/1/03 at 13:53

This is just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth!
I use an s4 with a ethernet connected PC and a WPC11 PCMCIA card in my laptop. I'm running XP pro and use ZoneAlarmPro. With the S4, I do not use WEP, I just changed the number of users from the default of 50, to 2. So when I have both the PC and Laptop running, no one else can 'share' my WAP. From what I understand, WEP slows down the transfer rate to the WAP, so unless I really have nasty security problems, I'm just not going to use WEP. If your set up in your home neighborhood, chances of a hacker/cracker/unauthorized user getting into your system is quite slim as the 'big boys' don't bother with us 'little boys'. I dont think you should have a problem with your Netgear cards. Did you change the SSID on your router?


groosbro - 29/1/03 at 03:19

This is what I noticed with Linksys wireless routers: They have some kind of proprietary implemenation of WAP. I had a Linksys wireless AP and a Linksys card, everything worked. When I got a USR and an SMC card, they would not work no matter what I did.
I switched to an Intel AP, and it works perfectly with the USR and SMC cards
There is something non standard about the Linksys standard.


shellyj - 30/1/03 at 17:23

Instead of trying to use WEP, for our home network we use MAC address filtering. We live in an area with a lot of techies, but haven't had any intrusion problems (at least haven't detected any yet).


jemmitch - 30/1/03 at 17:36

I got stressed about security and tried to switch on WEP (not on linksys however, two belkin usb units and a 3com pcmcia card). Got nowhere. just could not get everything to talk so sacked it. I used netstumbler just to see if there were any other wireless networks around and found nothing so in the end felt it was not worth the bother. Concur with a previous opinion that the likelyhood of an attack on a home machine over a wireless link are not that high although i accept it could easily happen if someone was determined enough.


sirlinus75 - 2/2/03 at 17:32

Thank you everyone for your posts...I finally got my network up and running using WEP 40bit by one of two things I tried concurrently. The first was to move my wireless router off the top of my case and on to the other side of the desk. (doh!) After that I switched the key index on my NG wireless pci card from 1 to 0. I thought it was strange that the linksys router index values went from 1 through 4, but Netgear's pci cards start at 0. Anyway, I was finally able to get up and running after that with only a few disconnects here and there.


VStarMan - 24/10/03 at 00:52

quote:
Instead of trying to use WEP, for our home network we use MAC address filtering. We live in an area with a lot of techies, but haven't had any intrusion problems (at least haven't detected any yet).

I'm doing the same setup you are and I moved to a different channel besides the default 11. icon_smile


deejaygirl - 24/10/03 at 15:08

I've seen the performance with and without, and in my environment, the encryption overhead is really, really high. Without encryption, the speed is just slightly less than an wired connection. With encryption, the speed is about HALF of the encryption speed. It's a real bottleneck ....

quote:
This is just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth!
I use an s4 with a ethernet connected PC and a WPC11 PCMCIA card in my laptop. I'm running XP pro and use ZoneAlarmPro. With the S4, I do not use WEP, I just changed the number of users from the default of 50, to 2. So when I have both the PC and Laptop running, no one else can 'share' my WAP. From what I understand, WEP slows down the transfer rate to the WAP, so unless I really have nasty security problems, I'm just not going to use WEP. If your set up in your home neighborhood, chances of a hacker/cracker/unauthorized user getting into your system is quite slim as the 'big boys' don't bother with us 'little boys'. I dont think you should have a problem with your Netgear cards. Did you change the SSID on your router?


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