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How Stable is WEP?
PktLoss asks: "I recently joined the wireless home networking craze, and bought two products, a wireless router and a wireless PCMCIA card. When I just connect normally, I have no problems. The connection is rock solid, decent transfer rates. Im very happy with the purchase. However, for obvious reasons, I would like to enable WEP with 128bit encryption. However, once i do that, the connection goes flaky, dropping after a few moments, or minutes, even when mere feet from the router. Are there problems with stability and WEP? Do certain applications have issues with WEP (I've been disconnected when running nothing but Windows)? Is there anything i can do to resolve this?"
"Linksys blames this problem on:
Some applications are having problem with WEP. WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy is performed jointly by Nikita Borisov, Ian Goldberg, and David Wagner and not yet standardized and not having solution with its wireless connection problems...Does this sound like a load of crock to anyone or is it just me?"
Whenever I set up a wireless network I make sure the only card allowed to use the network is one that I allow (via mac address filter) Also I make sure that however many computers need IP addresses are the max that I'll lease. That way if you are using the IP no one else will get one leased. WEP... isn't secure anyway so both those options are gonna help.
I had a Linksys WAP11 wireless access point with WPC11 cards at the office, and they were horribly unreliable no matter what I did. I was about to give up when I found a firmware update for the WAP on Linksys' support site. With that installed and all of the drivers updated to latest versions everything works like a charm.
I'd suggest looking to see if there are firmware updates for your wireless router. Depending on how long your retailer had it sitting in their warehouse you may not have the latest and greatest versions of everything.
i've found that the problem goes away with a quick reboot; given that i'm using ad hoc mode since the bloody wireless router died and the replacement was d.o.a. this may not be entirely relevant; however, i am using WEP and my experience is that 2k ironically is much solid for wireless. just my $0.02
I have this exact same problem with the exact same Linksys router you mention. However, I have a different wireless card (Orinoco).
I have two answers for you.
First, the easiest workaround in XP: Let your card connect to your gateway. Once it's connected, bring up the wireless properties in XP for this card. Disable the checkbox for "Let Windows configure my wireless properties". This will prevent XP from making any further updates to your wireless connections, and you will stay connected to your router permanently. You will have to re-enable then re-disable that checkbox if you reboot so it can find it again, but that's only a few seconds of effort for what seems like a perfectly good workaround.
Second: I got, from Linksys support, a Technical Bulletin on "...using Windows XP with wireless networks". It mentions the Orinoco card specifically, but everything in there seems generic enough that it may be worth a try. Ask them for TB-054 (it's a PDF). The workaround above works well enough that I haven't made the time yet to follow these instructions, but it looks like it's meant to address this specific problem.
<rant>If all my damn neighbors would stop advertising their SSID's like insecure idiots, I have a feeling this problem wouldn't come up. And yes, it appears to only be a problem with XP.</rant>
I've been working with about 8 different 802.11b cards testing out Access Point mode in HostAP for Linux.
I can tell you straight off that the high-end cards are worth their money in performance if you are serious about WiFi. My favorite right now is the Cisco Aironet 350. It has power. It has range. It has rich management features. And it is fast. I was consistently pounding out 4.2 Mbit/sec under iperf, while the next step down were Orinoco Gold's pumping out about 3.6 Mbit/sec.
The cheaper DLink and Linksys cards, in comparison, would sustain only about 2.2 Mbit/sec.
Finally, it may be that the particular firmware in your card may be buggy. The HostAP mailing list occasionally talk of such problems.
Some cards actually rely on the host CPU to do the WEP encryption/decryption. In such cases, your performance will suffer, especially on slower machines.
The wireless router, too, may be at fault. It may be that WEP is improperly implemented.
The best way to tell what's going on is to take your client card and test it with another AP; and to test another card with your AP. That might help identify the culprit.
BTW, not related to WEP, but there's another reason to buy more expensive 802.11b cards... You might be in a hostile radio environment. Cheapers cards likely have less sensitive detectors and degrades much more readily due to interference or weak signals (due to distance). As errors stack up at the higher bit rates, your station will get downgraded to lower speeds.