Techy Tuesday

Okay, this is where I put on my beanie with the radar dish ....

Many of you have wireless networks at home, and many of those wireless networks are using WEP encryption.  It's easy and simple to implement.  Quick & dirty (technical phrase).

It's bad for your network.

First of all, most access points force WEP encrypted networks to use a slower speed ("A" rather than "N"), which you might not notice until you do the smart thing and change your encryption.

Smart thing?

Yes.  Smart thing.  WEP encryption got broken into a LONG time ago - hackers and thieves know this, know how to do this, and WILL do it given a chance.  All they need to do is park on the street in range of a given network and they are IN.  Oh, it isn't THAT simple, but they have software that will do it in short order.  Meanwhile, you sit in the comfort of your home and do your banking and ordering and such, and every bit, byte, credit card number and password winds up in some hacker's laptop.  Then he drives away with your stuff.  Literally.

Change your encryption to WPA or WPA2.  It is safer, less likely to get cracked, and you'll find your network speed, internally, is much faster.  If you're like me and you have cable, you'll see Internet access response speeds that will make your eyes pop.

Be safe.  Keep your stuff.

Ndinombethe.