[selowitch]

Am I being foolhardy by disabling WEP (and WPA, for that matter) on my home wireless network?

Because it measurably slows down such things as wireless printing, filesharing, and the use of my Xbox wirelessly, I am gambling that MAC address filtering (limiting access to the MAC addresses of my three client machines) will be sufficient.

My reasoning is that while somebody could theoretically "spoof" these addresses, I live in a small rural Maine town (population less than 7,000), so the likelihood of my having a neighbor knowledgeable enough and motivated enough to hijack my signals seems pretty remote.

Thoughts?

[wuzup101]

I really wouldn't worry too much about it unless:

1) Your neighbor really is knowledgeable, likes to take what's not his, and/or just plain hates you

2) You have $1000s of data, critical work, etc... that is uber sensative and for your eyes only

I personally don't recomend encription for home networks unless you have extraordinary reasons to protect yourself. Most home wireless routers are bairly powerful enough to send signals out of your house/land. So unless your neighbor starts camping out on your front lawn with his laptop and he's somehow browsing the internet, I wouldn't worry about it!

[JHromadka]

I don't run WEP and just use MAC-level security as well. I didn't even have that until I got an Airport Express a few days ago and figured my wireless signal was now stronger.

[Freeflyer]

I've just been using the mac address filtering for a couple of years now. Like you, I found that WEP slowed everything down. I figured that if someone was smart enough to spoof the mac address, and wanted to go to that much trouble, then they were going to get onto the network no matter what I did.

I wouldn't worry about it.

J.