Problem is, if you force them to use security (or even make it the default), then you have to support their other devices which won't connect to it because they are too lazy to make it work. Then you end up supporting Windows, Mac, Xbox, and whatever other device they might have.

The current state, let Darwin cull the herd, is likely to stay the way it is.

It's slowly getting better. Some companies are starting to build one-button security where the devices work out the key amongst themselves like how Bluetooth pairing works. I think this is the way to go for the masses because frankly, wizards suck. Wizards are a series of koan-like questions that appear one at a time and you can't see what you entered previously or what's coming up...it's nearly context-free. Microsoft thought wizards would make things simpler, but they just made things hard in a different way.

Let them learn from their own mistakes is basically what will educate them I guess...

Well even those of us who are willing to do some research throw our hands up in frustration.

I started out with an Airport Extreme Base Station that would only work 20% of the time because it kept getting clobbered by my neighbors network or overheating no matter where I put it. I tried all the hints and tips that I could find on the net after spending hours searching and nothing could make that thing work for more than an hour at a time. I finally ditched it and got a Linksys.

The AEBS works brilliantly in my son's house which is in a less densly populated area - lesson learned? AEBS doesn't play well with others. Was it worth $400 CAD - NO!!

The Linksys works fine with all my Mac equipment and rarely gets into a quarrel with neighboring networks but when it does, I can usually coax it into working again. Following Apple's advice, I use WPA encryption.

But then I got a Windows PC that came with a wireless card. There was nothing on the box or in the documentation for the computer or the wireless card to indicate that it would only handle WEP encryption (which my research suggests is less secure) - I didn't discover this until I got home with the new computer and tore my hair out trying to connect to the wireless network. When I eventually figured it out, I returned that computer (it fell short of my needs in lots of ways) and got a different one. This one had wireless "built-in" again there was no indication of what kind of encryption it could handle but I was delighted to discover that it could handle WPA so my network was once more in harmony.

Then I got a WiFi card for my PDA and to my chagrin, I discovered that it could only deal with WEP encryption - once again this important fact was not advertised and could only be discovered by trial and error.

Now things got interesting. The Mac PB could handle any kind of wireless network encryption, the PC laptop could only handle WPA and the PDA could only handle WEP......

Can you see why I might be tempted to say the he||| with it and leave the network open??

Manufacturers of these things could put a lot more thought into them.

I DO the research, I DO pay attention and I'm frustrated.

Most people don't have the time to spend. I'm fairly knowlegable about computers, if a bit slow, imagine what ordinary people face.

Darwin my foot.

The comparison to a car is ludicrous. Cars come with standard ways to lock them. Imagine if cars came with some obscure locking mechanism that required the purchaser to do days of research before they could take the car to the mall for the first time or even safely park it in the driveway.

Margaret

I agree. The argument from that side of the fence seems to be just that. I guess you can't make 100% of the people happy. I'm a mac and linux guy at home; for my day to day work..in ofice or out, I'm more productive on my mac than my coworkers on thier Compaqs. Ease of use is at play. But, i'm a tinkerer, and there are times that OS X ease of use gets in the way. It's easy to complain about, because at that moment, things arent going the way I want them to and as the consumer, I want to gripe (we see a lot of that here, eh? :) ).

I'm not arguing with you, and my analogy was a tad off.. but I meant a car that wouldn't lock at all. no standard mechanism.. no nothing. You can't lock it. And you KNOW you can't lock it. If you can't lock it and you buy it, and someone comes along and either steals the car or steals something inside of it, is the person who sold you it at fault?

If you can't understand encryption, or arent to be bothered with it, then you can't secure your network. You can't lock it.

And please understand I'm not referring to you directly, but the scenario in itself. If a person can't conceptualize it, then they can't do it. And sometimes, it's critical that they do.

At home, I use WEP , MAC address authentication and LEAP. I'm looking to move toward RADIUS. Why use WEP? Well, let's see... I use a Cisco Aironet 350 Access Point. In my Powerbooks and the one IBM Thinkpad that connect to my network, I use Cisco 350 PCMCIA 802.11b cards (LEAP). in my B&W's and G4 I use Microsoft PCI cards (Broadcom chipset) that use the Airport drivers. For the iMac and iBook I use Belkin F5D6050 USB Wireless adapters. The other PC's and Macs are wired.

The Belkin devices were inexpensive and only do WEP. At the time, WEP was suffficient. I could replace them with Airport cards, but for the price of Airport cards I could buy SIX of the Belkins. The Airport cards and the Belkins dont do LEAP. The Aironet AP and the PCMCIA cards were the first wireless gear i had. I trusted Cisco. Still do. But at the time buying PCI Cisco adapters price wise wasn't an option... like Airport cards weren't. Part of this led to me crafting that Mac wireless adapter list in hopes that some of it will help others and in turn MAYBE help solve problems I might have.

I actually posted here for a little help in implementing RADIUS and EAP, thinking there might be a way to get away with that on all these different devices. For now, I manage the three different types, in three different ways.

I'm not suggesting everyone do this. or be that in depth. I am suggesting that people really do thier homework. For instance in your case, You prefer WPA, yet have bought devices that support only WEP. If the box doesn't say WPA, only "supports encryption" that's not good enough. Sometimes.. well MOST times the sales guy's assesment of the product isn't enough. You need to see that it says WPA on the box. If it does and it doesn't work, then you have someone to blame.

In some cases, one cant get away with using that one technology.. I imagine your PDA device was one of those instances. I'm willing to bet you can't find a competing device that does WPA.

Yeah, this can all be frustrating. But is it the fault of the manufacturers who make competing products? The fault of those who "know" how to get this stuff working yet don't make things easier for those who don't? The fault of the consumer who probably doesnt do enough research or wont allocate the time to learn/conceptualize the technology?

Doesn't the blame..or cause for frustration spread across all those layers? I ride the fence as a consumer and a provider of services. As a provider, i know I can't make everyone happy. But I'd like to think I go out of my way to make things as seamless as possible. And as a consumer, although I'd like to point the finger back up the chain, I realize, that there's a good chance there's a person whose shoes I've been in somewhere up that chain.

So before I do that, I TRY (not saying I always do) to be conscious of that and come as prepared as possible for my purchase, or when approaching them concerning a problem with the product. A number of us in service conveniently forget that when we become customers.

I work in the industry, and have never heard of a card that can do WPA but not WEP. I don't think it exists. And every card I've seen has the WEP64/WEP128/WPA capabilities listed in the spec sheet, or on the web site.

If you needed a part or add-on for your car, would you buy one from the same dealer, or just go get one that looks similar from any random auto parts supplier? If you did the latter, would you expect it to work properly?

The car analogy may not bee so far off... Let me explain... Every one is saying that users don't know what encryption is... that may be true... but lock a car and give the key to someone who doesn't knwo what a key is and they won't go far either...
The fact that companies have started offering things like firewalls and anti-viruses to their customers but that are (from what I can see) mostly controled from the ISP's end is a good idea... cause then its "knowledgeable" (though this may vary depending on the one you get on the phone :D some are just flakes that seemed to have slipped through the cracks) people who get ot configure it.. and the user pretty much can't tinker with it or turn it off... I know that here in Canada Sympatico from bell offers that... but since I'm not a customer or have not heard feed back on it, can't say if the idea is a success or not... But it can't be worse than the time their offered Linksys routers at a discount but offer no support to users... can it ? :confused:

I would have thought so too, but this PC laptop came with an internal wireless card and I can't find anywhere to enter the WEP key or switch it to WEP - if you know how, please enlighten me.

Not sure if you're with me or against me on this point :rolleyes:

Margaret

I'd like to think we're all on the same side. :) And maybe if we can stop being uber geeks and take the time out to help our wayward neighbors, and they show the patience and willingness to learn how to get thier wireless networks secured, we can all sing camp songs :)

D00D! S'Mores!!

Please don't eat the iPod shuffle...

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree and I'm doing what I can in that regard. I also think though that as IT professionals we should be lobbying the manufacturers to do a better job of making things seamless for the end user.

If it wasn't for all the folks who don't know a byte from a cheese sandwich being willing to shell out their hard-earned cash for home computers, all of our toys would still be costing way more than they do.

The manufacturers are selling the things about the same way as they sell toasters, and with about the same amount of instruction - in fact this PC laptop that I'm using right now had less in the way of documentation than the new steam iron I got last fall.

Take care Margaret

PC laptop??!! Somebody needs a new Mac mini.

I just might get one :D

My PowerBook is in the shop right now. It developed a problem with the trackpad and then an external mouse wouldn't work - ever tried to use a PB with just the keyboard?

I tried backing it up to an external hard drive, but it wouldn't recognize the drive either so it was one sick PB.

I got a call yesterday from the shop - they've replaced the trackpad and now that part is working - so is an external mouse, but it's still not recognizing the external drive so there's still something wrong with it so they've ordered a new logic board..................

This P*C laptop isn't that bad, but everything is so buggy I never know if something is a "bug" or a "feature" :D

Margaret

Then someone seriously screwed it up, because Windows isn't "buggy" all on its own.

I'm curious, what's the machine/card that seems to only have WPA? I'd like to research it and figure out if some are actually shipping with WPA only, which would be a new thing. And probably really bad.

Sarcasm? Yeah, must be.

If you install only windows on a system made out of good hardware and don't install anything else it doesn't have too many issues... Install Office or Windows media player and you may run into problems :D But I must admit... they have been getting a bit better at it with XP... a bit...

That's the typical Wintel excuse given by IT types bent on keeping Windoze. It usually goes along the lines of: "A properly configured PC will be fine." All that does is set up the user for blame when it doesn't work right. If the premise is accepted, then when the system doesn't work, the user must have done something wrong to the configuration. While almost anything (computer or not) can be badly configured, if you start hearing a lot about properly configuring any product, you should be wary.

You should be even more concerned if you can only install the OS and one or two apps! What's the point in having the computer anyway? Aren't there supposed to be lots more apps for Windoze? But you can't run them?

Sigh. Not yet another Windows-bashing thread. I've supported and worked on Windows for 15 years now. It works. It works well. In fact it works perfectly until people dork it up.

I like my PowerBook better. But it has given me a LOT of problems, most of them documented here. One turned out to be a bug that Apple eventually fixed, but meanwhile it cost me a LOT of time and a little data loss. I've had to reload the OS several times. Mac OS is not perfect either.

Neither is more buggy than the other. MS gives you more opportunities to shoot yourself by not controlling the hardware, and because there is much more software available to booger up the system.

When I had my OS X problems, everyone immediately told me to start removing things, it can't be OS X's fault. I had the same answer as what you just said. But then it turned out to actually be a bug in the OS. I've found and reported one Windows OS bug in 15 years of using it, and found and reported one OS X bug in 1 month of using it.

Those of you who keep insisting that Windows XP has intrinsic bugs and problems and can't run reliably are simply WRONG. Period. I can point to hundreds of machines I support which run perfectly day after day in real-world usage.