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performance drop when WEP is enabled?

G

GoingUp

Lifer
Is that true? Sittin here at the school library with no WEP, my signal is strong and fast, but when I sit even next to my wireless router at home with 128bit WEP turned on, I get a lot of dropped connections where the signal drops to 0% all of a sudden. Is WEP to blame?

I have a linksys router, anyone else notice that problem?
 
Yes, WEP takes a large chunk of your performance. I'd guesstimate around 40%, but I've used some cheapo equipment before that was up near 60%.

randal
 
It depends on the equipment. In low-end wireless stuff, it's fairly common for WEP to be a performance drop.
 
Unless u have ultra ultra high end gear, encryption (and then of course decryption) will always cause some kind of slowdown. Stronger the encryption, the bigger the hit.
 
WEP will slow down the local network throughput from and to wireless clients, but it does NOT cause the signal to drop. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Are you losing the connection, or seeing an actual signal strength drop, or both???

If you are losing your connection to the wireless client on a regular basis at home that could be because:

1. There is something wrong with the router. Many routers have had to have firmware upgrades to make them stop dropping wireless clients periodically. And some haven't been fixed yet.

2. There is something wrong with the wireless client. This might NOT be a hardware or firmware issue. (For instance, if you are running Windows XP SP1 check to see if 802.1x authentication is turned on on the client. If it is turned on, turn it OFF. Your Linksys home router doesn't provide for certificate serving, therefore the client drops the connection every three minutes. This is just one of several possible explanations. It's only an example.)

- prosaic
 
My card just loses all signal every 3-5 minutes or so for no apparent reason... any guesses why? I have a linksys router and dlink wireless pcmcia card.... what is this certificate serving?

I am also running win2k....
 
Oh, bummer! I haven't done wireless networking using Windows 2000. I can tell you that SP1 for Windows XP started causing the 802.1x authentication to behave differently. Before SP1 the Windows XP wireless networking wouldn't disconnect you if it couldn't connect to a certificate server. Afterward a lot of people started seeing their wireless connections fail every three minutes -- until they disabled 802.1x authentication.

AFAIK Windows 2000 doesn't include the same sort of ability to control wireless network connections that is present in Windows XP. I believe you have to make use of third party client managers to control the wireless client configuration, including whether or not 802.1x authentication is enabled. But I just don't really know. If someone here has experience doing wireless networking with Windows 2000 clients I hope they'll try to help out.

Insofar as other common possibilities are concerned, if you've checked to be certain that your router and wireless client are running the latest firmware, and that the wireless client is running the most up-to-date Windows 2000 compatible driver, I think it's definitely time to start going into the wireless client configuration.

Of course, it would be nice if you could get your hands on another Windows 2000 wireless client system that is KNOWN to be working to see how it behaves when connecting to your router.

- prosaic
 
As an adjunct to my post immediately above --

When you say that your "card loses all signal" every 3 to 5 minutes, what EXACTLY do you mean? If you have a client manager of some type that indicates signal strength, are you saying that the actual radio signal strenght drops to zero over that time interval, or do you mean that you lose the network connection but that the signal stays strong. It will help people here to know which is happening. If the actual detected signal strength from the router is dropping to zero, then either the router is malfunctioning (likely) or the wireless networking client manager is screwing up somehow (less likely -- in my opinion).

- prosaic
 
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