Wireless Internet Routers: Which Security Is Best?
When you have a wireless router, you need to lock it down if you want to make sure you’re getting all the bandwidth that the router can provide you with the bandwidth the user is actually paying for. If you do not lock it down, neighbors will often steal your Internet connection. The neighbors who do this are not doing anything illegal. While the people piggybacking off of your signal may be acting immorally, the only way to stop it is to lock down your signal. One of the best ways to do this is to use the security.
Two primary protocols are in use WPA and WPA2, both let the user put a password on his network to lock it down. WPA2 offers an extra layer of encryption and make it harder for a person to decode the signals sent out from the router. Your computer’s wireless card will decode the encrypted signals.
The encryption and decryption software will not fool government agencies for long, but few people actually need that level of security. What most people need is a way to protect their signal from surreptitious and unnamed signal thieves. When you finally do lock down your signal, you’ll get better performance from your ISP as well.