[Moscool]

if you don't secure it, it's almost an invitation.

And so it should be!

I'm pretty sickened by the egotistic and ignorant attitude of the WEP at all costs crowds

Fact no1: Encryption can be broken in less than 5 minutes by a hacker with the right software, it is pretty much useless against somebody who is committed to get in

Fact no2: It takes a lot of traffic to slow your connection down; as stated above you could easily have 20 concurrent users and not notice any difference in speed. Encryption on the other hand does slow things down

As noted above, it is extremely convivial to be able to borrow occasionally from somebody else's bandwidth. I remember once when my ISP wouldn't let me back on untill my router had a firmware ugrade and the only way to download the upgrade was through a neighbour's connection... :clap:

Of course you don't want to be the only person with a router in your neighbourhood, but these days are gone. A quick check of the signal around my house has just picked up 12 wifi networks for example.

If you find out that there are dozens of people hoarding your bandwidth, then MAC filtering is a better option: if removes interlopers and doesn't add the processing burden of encryption.

Now I think I'll get off the fence

 

[Moscool]

Also, think about what it is your neighbours might be downloading on your free wireless. They may even have their own internet access when required, but for stuff they would be embarrassed or imprisoned for, they'll use yours. And the police and your ISP must and will assume that it's you.

Hey, I'm prepared to live dangerously