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WEP encryption useless
Authored by: Lizard_King on Nov 22, '02 08:42:37AM

uhhh... this may not be the forum for debate, but WEP is *not* useless! You may be trying to say in a very extreme way that WEP is vulnerable, but readers shouldn't simply discount the technology altogether.

It is true that WEP encryption can easily be broken with the use of some freely available tools found on the Internet. If you think that data you put on the pipe on a WEP-enabled WAN is secure then you're dead wrong.

An advantage of using WEP is that it discourages the majority war-drivers, piggy-backs, script kiddies and other types of people that could leach your wireless bandwidth for personal use or fun. If you live in an apartment building and you are running a WEP-enabled WAN and your neighbor is running a completely open WAN, someone who wants a quick free ride will more often than not pass over your WAN for an easier target (because there are *sooo* many easy targets out there).

A disadvantage of using WEP (besides the obvious) is that it will slow your connection down (slightly) because of the added overhead of the encryption. Personally, I use MAC address filtering on my home network. I know that this can be broken as well (with MAC spoofing) but I'm ok with that risk for now.



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