Comments for Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

Comment from jerka on 2008-03-24

2008-03-24T22:25:25Z

I enabled WPA-PSK and my connection slowed down and sometimes I even couldn't connect to the network, and also my ping in call of duty was big. Now I disabled it and performance is much better, but also sometimes connection slows down.

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A comment on: Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

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Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2006-11-24

2006-11-24T16:47:23Z

Yes. Another computer in range could still be "sniffing" your traffic.

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A comment on: Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

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Comment from Kurt on 2006-11-24

2006-11-24T14:25:07Z

Do I still need encryption if I have restricted access to named PC's/Mac's only? I have disabled SSID broadcasting (so no one can see the router) and given access only to my two laptops - do I still need to use WEP or WPA?

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A comment on: Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

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Comment from Thor Johnson on 2006-08-28

2006-08-28T15:58:37Z

Some thoughts:
WEP is useless as real encryption (but can serve as a "marker" saying "this is not the access point you're looking for. move along."). Hacked in under 5 minutes at last DefCon, iirc.
WPA seems to be OK for now (last I checked).

Old routers slowed down significantly (~5Mb/s -> 1.2 Mb/s) when WEP was enabled, but I don't know how the current generation fares.

You could also do what I do -- the WiFi access point is on the *public* side of the firewall (so I have 2 firewalls -- the WiFi firewall, and then the inner firewall (also a WRT54G, but the radio is turned off); the public can get to the internet without problems, but to get to the inside network (except for the Laserjet 4), you have to VPN into the "inner network". That makes setting up games a little more interesting if you're on the "inner network"; I keep USB WiFi fobs around to make things easier (plug it in, and you can get on the outer network without a fuss).

Tim:
At my friend's house, we used WiFi + encryption and we were OK playing WOW / GuildWars / HL2, but to get that level of performance (8 guests), we had to get one of the routers with MIMO capability, otherwise it seemed like the HL2 dude was hogging the connection (and we would get laggy when playing with GuildWars).

He was using MAC filtering and WEP-64.

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A comment on: Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

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Comment from Tim Larkin on 2006-08-25

2006-08-25T14:53:57Z

How does encryption effect online gaming?

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A comment on: Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

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