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WEP vs WPA in terms of speed

Hi,

I am currently using 64-bit WEP and I clocked just north of 3000 kbps on the CNet Bandwidth Meter (my ISP is Comcast in San Francisco).

I wonder how much faster this connection would be if I used WPA compression instead.

Also, if I am using the generic Windows (I have XP Professional) drivers for my Wi-fi NIC (Linksys WPC-11), for networks that have other types of compression, I still get the message that the selected network has WEP compression when I click the 'View Available Wireless Networks' option. Any ideas?

Anuj

PS - Regarding my earlier problem (thread - 'I have an interesting problem'), it turns out that Windows XP does not accept a password for an encrypted network. It will only accept a key.

Reply to
Schizoid Man
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The 3Mbit/s download speed is about as fast as it gets with cable modems.

802.11b can handle up to 11Mbit/s (although, real world numbers are about half that) and 802.11g can handle up to 54Mbit/s. WEP and WPA encryption do add a bit of overhead in terms of calculations needed to encrypt/decrypt but do not have major impacts on performance.

Your main bottleneck is the cable modem (although, 3Mbit/s is much faster than most DSL lines). An upgrade to 802.11g would only make sense if you want to set up a LAN. Using either WEP or WPA will not slow things down noticeably and you should use one of them.

-Yves

Reply to
Yves Konigshofer

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