Diane,

Encrypting will do nothing to help the signal strength. However, you should
enable encryption to protect your network and data. You said yourself that
there are other wireless networks in the area, and any one of them could
access your unprotected wireless network. I suggest more than one layer of
protection. The first is encryption. WEP is probably the the weakest form,
but usually good enough to protect in a residential area from casual access.
If you choose WEP, use 128bit encryption.

Better encryption is WPA, if all your devices support it, use that.

A second layer is to use MAC filtering. This is a feature in the router that
will only allow connections from specific devices that you authorize by
manually entering the devices MAC address (a unique HW address specific to
each device). Any device not in the list will not be able to connect.

However, this is not your primary problem. The issue of a weak signal will
not be solved by encryption. One thing to check is to make sure you are not
using a channel that is already in use by other routers in your
neighborhood. Most people install their routers using the default settings
and never change them, so you end up with a bunch of routers in the area all
trying to use the same channel, SSID, etc. Make sure you change these in
your router to something not currently in use and see if that improves
things.

If you still have signal issues, and think it is the separation between
downstairs and upstairs, then maybe what needs to be done is to make sure
the access point (I assume it is being used as a repeater?) is as close as
possible to the downstairs one. If this still can't be improved, then you
may need to hard wire a run upstairs to an access point.

Russ Poffenberger
  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of D Duncan
> Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 1:16 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Wireless LAN encrypting
> 
> I'm hoping you can tutor me on the theory and execution of 
> encrypting a residential wireless LAN.
> 
> downstairs:
> 1.-DSL modem cabled to
> 2.-DLink wireless router RJ45'd to
> 3.-Linksys access point wired with/to
> 4.-Linksys signal booster
> upstairs:
> 5.-Linksys access point
> 6.-Linksys wireless adapter usb'd to PC (XP)
> 
> Now, the signal upstairs is really sporadic, but I think that 
> may be because the signal from downstairs has to travel 
> through an environment with brick and metal and assorted 
> other noisy stuff.
> 
> When the upstairs pc goes online, it takes a few minutes to 
> complete and the signal info on the linksys adapter monitor 
> widget notes a weak signal plus others in the neighborhood 
> who are presently online.
> 
> I'm wondering if encrypting the signal would bump up the 
> upstairs signal strength?
> 
> Would I encrypt (WEP, right?) node 2. (as listed above) or...?
> 
> Would all the other nodes automatically be ok with that, or 
> would I have to manually do stuff?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Diane
> 
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