Securing wireless
 

Having read the guides I've noticed that using wireless security WPA or WEP seems to cause some slowdown on the connection. Im wondering if using MAC filtering would be a more effective way ? in conjunction with hiding the SSID ??

Re: Securing wireless
 

MAC filtering would certainly prevent unauthorised connections. However the connection would still be unencrypted so traffic could be potentially intercepted.

Re: Securing wireless
 

That was my thinking, that with hiding the SSID and MAC filtering would negate the requirement for WEP/WPA encryption and therefore potentially help to increase the wireless throughput

Re: Securing wireless
 

How much throughput do you want (and what do you want if for)? Wireless (@ 54 Mb/s ideally) is still considerable faster than your internet connection, so disabling WEP/WPA won't speed up your browsing/downloads. If you're interested in moving large files over your network swiftly you would gain much more by ditching wireless altogether and going with old-fashioned Cat-5.

Re: Securing wireless
 

Due to the added data parsed with encryption if your network connection is 20mb EVEN if you have 54mbps wireless you WILL lose capacity anywhere between 1-3mbps

Cisco have a paper on it somewhere, I'll dig it up, i was reading up on it for some stuff at work

Re: Securing wireless
 

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Personally,I wouldn't compromise my security for a few mbs (relative to 20) though. But I'm on a 4 meg connection (and a very light downloader), so there's not that much flowing through my network anyway.

Re: Securing wireless
 

I think its me being a perfectionist :p: if im paying for 20mb i want as much of it as i can get :D :D

Re: Securing wireless
 

In that case, do remember to turn security back on once traffic shaping kicks in :D