Cheap wireless PC cards – a false economy?

I recently set up a wireless network for a friend. No problem I said, should take about an hour (well I do things properly – see my article on securing wireless routers) Around 5 hours later I was still left baffled, the iMac and iPod were connected sweetly while the laptop kept on crashing every time I flicked the switch on the side of the case to turn on the wireless network card.

Now I had installed the latest drivers for the card, and seeing as this was XP I also installed KB893357 – the OS patch for XP so it supports the latest wireless encryption standards such as the much lauded WPA2 encryption.

Still the laptop crashed, and only when turning on the wireless card. This was deemed an inherent hardware fault with the laptop. So I decided to do the only sane thing, buy him a wireless PC card and cut my losses. As the router was an ADSL modem router only capable of 54G I was looking at the more affordable end of the market. I found just the thing. A Netgear (same as the router – nice idea) WG511v2. The fact it was a v2 card gave me confidence, and the fact that it was only £15.55 including VAT also helped the wallet relax and take the strain.

The card turned up and I triumphantly went round to his house, card in box still cellophane wrapped. After a few minutes the card was installed and attempting to connect, which it did. Then it promptly disconnected. Then it did this again. Connect – disconnect. Connect – disconnect. After about half an hour and a few blushes I pulled stumps, being allowed to take the laptop away so that I could look at it “in more detail”.

Well it's after looking at this in more detail that I wanted to share my experience with the masses and maybe, just maybe, if you're reading this now and I have saved you making the wrong purchase, or given you the confidence to go back to the PC shop and demand a refund then this article was worth writing.

And here it is folks. The card DOES NOT SUPPORT WPA2. Going back to the web site from whence it came I noticed the heartbreaking words “Up to 128bit WEP encryption” in the blurb. And also “Upgradable to WPA” There is a difference between WPA and WPA2 encryption. WPA being the much needed improvement on the easily cracked WEP standard, and WPA2 being the universal replacement for WPA. The box has a WPA compatible sticker on it, but just ask the shop assistant whether it supports WPA2.

WPA uses TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) and WPA2 uses the stronger AES (Advanced Encyption Standard) and since March 13^th 2006 this is mandatory for any device wishing to be certified by the WIFI – Alliance as WIFI certified.

While home PC security is all about making your PC and internet connection so difficult to hack into as to be not worth the effort for the common hacker and neerdowell I would suggest using the strongest encryption algorithm available and right now that is AES.

So in short, pay a bit extra for your wireless technology and make sure that it supports WPA2 (AES).