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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?"
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.