Scott - I'll bow to most of your expertise and destruction of my straw man arguments. I'd like to change the topic of the conversation to something a lot less political, and much more a current problem for current wireless users. You said: "I would be interested in anyone who thinks that WPA2 with either TKIP or CCMP alongside a EAP-PEAP/EAP-TTLS authentication implementation is unworkable for security. Yes, this does mean that anything older than XP or Windows 2000 needs a client. OS X users would be forced to use panther or a client. Unless you've actually tried this stuff out its very hard to say its 'insecure as hell'. " Until just last week, my experience with wireless has been coffee shops that provide "free" connectivity. Generally speaking, I've been nervous about using them unless I'm either just browsing the net and don't really care what anyone sees me doing, or I'm locked into the corporate VPN that theoretically makes my airborne traffic secure anyways. I just upgraded my Qwest/Actiontec DSL modem to the latest that includes a built in wireless A/P. Security is configurable in the standard Actiontec browser based management console, but as far as I can tell, I've the choices of WEP, 802.1x(?), and WPA. (Forgive me if I goof - I'm working off of memory here). As a home user who wants to lock down his home wireless network, what's the easiest way to do this? I would guess that WPA2 with the alphabet soup of accompanying acronyms is secure, but is it workable for a normal end user? Is WPA sufficient? Do I need a backroom server to manage all that stuff? I'd like to know because I don't want to turn this on and render the rest of my home net vulnerable to anyone driving by with a wireless NIC and a bad attitude. I appreciate your experience on this issue, and anyone else that'd care to contribute, 'cuz I'm really in the dark about it. (I'm in the dark about politics too, but that doesn't stop me from making an ass out of myself). - Nick -----Original Message----- From: Scott Dier [mailto:dieman at ringworld.org] Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 10:02 AM To: Ryberg, Nicholas Cc: tcwug-list at tcwug.org Subject: Re: [tcwug-list] THURS: International E-Democracy Event Ryberg, Nicholas wrote: > themselves. From what I hear about proposals for the Mpls project, > end users will have to pay a fee, just like they do to use wireless at > Starbucks and Caribou, and that fee will be more than typical DSL > broadband service. > 'typical DSL broadband', meaning narrowband 256kbps or 1.5mbps/256kbps? $25-30 (depending on modem rental or purchase) a month is the cheapest narrowband in the area as far as I know (excluding taxes and fake provider imposed tax-fees). This is also via Qwest which may not even be servicing the entire city depending on the state of the wire plant. . . . Remainder clipped for brevity