Hidden SSID instead of WEP

You will have no protection at all....

Sniffer programs can still see your wireless traffic without SSID. Without WEP or WPA you are wide open.

MAC address filtering is a small help.

Guy

Syucomm wrote:

Hiding your SSID is useless, it provides no security as it is easily discovered. WEP is no real great, but it is real security. WPA is the best technique to use.

As others have said, no protection at all. And when the guy next door is checking for an unused channel in install his new wireless router, he won't see yours and plonk it on the same channel.

Every time one of your stations (PC with a wirelss card) that knows the SSID associates with the access point in your router, the SSIS is sent in the clear. So all someone else has to do is wait.

Thanks for saying that. I'm new at all this, but I had concluded that so long as I'm encrypted, there's no advantage to me to hide my SSID, for the very reason you cite. I want anybody who is manually selecting his channel to see me on channel 11, and try to avoid me by going to channel 1. The only advantage I can see to hiding SSID is if you are not encrypting or restricting MAC access. Then it would help prevent a neighbor from accidentally joining your network, but that's about all.

Is that right? You really do want everybody in the neighborhood to see you, just not be able to join your network.

Hi, ok thanks everyone for response. Now the problem is that: i'm using a netgear router/accesspoint. If i enable the WEP i can see the network only from NETGEAR NET CARDS!!!! Is possible something that? The netgear company can't close the use of router only for netgera product..... Can you help me on this issue? Thank you very much!

Nope. WEP is WEP. But there are multiple ways to translate passphrases into passkey strings, so after doing a translation once, copy the resulting passkey strings, as 26-digit hex strings, to the other nodes.

If you don't see a translator, just create a 26-digit hex string and copy that. The 26-digit (128 bit) string is safer than the 10-digit (64 bit) string.