If you have a wireless network at home, it is imperative that you encrypt it. (While recently in Virginia I was able to see the files on an iMac on the next street over.)
NewMexiKen isn’t knowledgeable enough to tell you how to go about this, but I can explain some of the basics.
- Wireless encryption and a firewall are both essential — they do different things
- The first standard was WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
- WEP is better than no protection at all
- WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was introduced in 2003
- WPA2 was an update to WPA in 2004
- WPA (and WPA2) are far superior to WEP
- If your wireless router, computer wireless card(s) or the associated software is older than 2003, you probably won’t be able to use WPA
- Newer products — and the Wii, PlayStation 3, PSP, XBox 360, iPhone — can use WPA, but not all of them can use WPA2
- WPA and WPA2 have two configurations: Personal and Enterprise
- If you use a good network password, WPA or WPA2 Personal is sufficient for a home network
Bottom line: Use WPA (or WPA2 if you can) and use a good password for the network. Use WEP if that’s all you’ve got.
I always used DWSP – “Distance Wireless Security Protocol”, meaning: you make sure that your home’s lot is big enough that any wireless signal converges to 0 before it reaches the lot boundaries 🙂
Sure, somebody could still use a strong antenna to reach into my wireless space, but then they would be faced with wireless routers that only accept the MAC-addresses I programmed. There are still devices out there that don’t speak all of the wireless security flavors and I found MAC-address tables to be the simplest approach with guaranteed security.