Slashdot Mirror
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 don't know if this helps, but I own several different wireless products from many different brands and run wep-128 on everything. Some of the computers even run WinXP. Although it is possible that I may have had minor problems, I've never had any problems that were visibile. It sounds like some firmware updates might help.
Even though you are probably the only one using your wireless router, someone clever running a program like Kismet or Ethereal can still sniff your unencrypted packets and pick out some nasty things from them. You're definitely right about WEP not being secure, but I do think that another layer of security can't hurt (unless of course it does something weird like make your connection flaky).
:)
My blog
'ip maddr' is for tweaking multicast addresses. you meant 'ip link set address ' i think :)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Take my advice. Do not buy 802.11g products yet. Do not buy ANY product until the standards it is supposed to be built upon are fully implemented. Even the 802.11g working group says this. They explicitly state that the standard, even though it's near the expected ratification date, will change right up until the last minute. Multiple vendors (Linksys, Dlink, and even Cisco) have not stated that their prestandard products will be fully upgradeable to standards-compliant products once the standard is ratified. Do yourself a favor and wait until the standard is complete before you jump into 802.11g. Buying now would be like buying a car meant to run on only one type of road. Unfortunately the road has yet to be completed. The road crews change the road daily. Your car simply might not work on a section of the road that has been changed. You vendor also hasn't committed to providing your car with updates once the road is complete either.