Comments for Wireless Encryption: do I need it?

Comment from lee on 2009-12-10

2009-12-10T18:48:14Z

i happened to come across this thread by chance (first time ive heard of this site). and i thought id post a comment, even if it is pretty old.

kurt: while you probably wont see this, for anyone that is thinking the same question.. yes you should enable encryption even if you limit the router to your devices only and disable broadcasting. People can still grab data packets your sending to your router, these packets can be parsed to grab the router info needed and your mac addy. then its just a case of someone spoofing there own mac address to clone yours and viola, access granted.

@jerka: any encryption will slow down the network, the act of encryption requires cpu cycles and therefore will take longer. However the speed difference should always be negligible, if it is causing serious problems and you can guarantee a good signal (no less than 80% if your playing games) then i imagine either your roter is old and needs upgrading, the routers firmware hasnt been full tested by the creators of it, your own wifi card has problems or theres some other sort of bug (obviously). Theres no clear cut resolution so always take a process of elimination approach, if possible try taking the device to a friends house and use their encrypted and working wifi network, this for a start will tell you if its your router or your device(s).

@leo: you mention in your thread,

"The only way someone could get in range (typically within 100 meters) is to actually come on to your property where you'd notice them."

This isnt technically correct, you can connect to wifi networks from a much larger range than that. In fact when i was doing a little RF research i managed to create a wifi aerial using a booster pack and an old sky parabol dish, i could connect with a 85% signal to my grandmothers house over 5 miles away using that at only 20% of the boosters power being used. Now with so many things similar to this commercially available, and with free spec sheets for anyone who wants to do it themselves relying on a distance factor is not advised.

All in all though a very nice article, always nice to see someone who specifically tells people not to use wep.

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

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Comment from jerka on 2008-03-24

2008-03-24T21:25:25Z

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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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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Comment from Thor Johnson on 2006-08-28

2006-08-28T14:58:37Z

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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Comment from Tim Larkin on 2006-08-25

2006-08-25T13:53:57Z

How does encryption effect online gaming?

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

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