I have heard of WEP encryption, where you use a sort of "character key" to encrypt your network. I know this is the most common way of protecting a wireless network.

My questions:

a) Is it any good ?
b) Is there a better alternative ?
c) How hard is it to set up in the first place ?

I am thinking about buying it but I don't want my neighbours sharing my broadband :cry:

^^Spike^^

Put it this way old bean

a) anything can be hacked if you know whats what. It is good enough to be 90% secure for the likes of us every day peeps.
b) yes but it costs
c) if I can do it so can you. It took me 1/2 to put my wireless setup together and 25 minutes of that was reading the manual (must stop that, get myself a bad name).

SiteAdmin is the one to talk to about wireless, bit of a dab hand at it.

Si

Oh my :oops:

Still...WEP 128bit is ok...obviously 256bit is better and more and more widely available (Si is right, it's easy to configure too).

Better alternative ? sure, WPA is a new encryption standard that is slowly creeping in to ultimately replace WEP - you can also invest in some hefty hardware encryption kit but for home use - forget it.

Si also made a good point that anything is hackable - best thing to do is hide your SSID (wireless "name") that way anyone "sniffing" for wireless networks won't see yours.