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Is this a good router in terms of secure encryption of signal? I don't mind if the speed is not that great...

I use one of these as a wireless access point, with DHCP turned off and provided by another router on my network. It works very well with decent range and speed.

To lock down the security, change the device default password and SSID. Next, turn off the SSID broadcast and reject all MAC addresses that are not your devices. Don't use WEP, instead use WPA-PSK 2 with a long non-word based password that includes letters, numbers and symbols. A dictionary attack on the WPA-PSK 2 password is the only real weakness. It's human nature to use easy to hack passwords. You only need to set up the WPA-PSK 2 password once on each device, so there's no need to make it easy. Use a USB thumb drive to cut and paste the password when installing to other computers. Go to Gibson Research and try their random 64 character password generator to lock this up real good: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

#1, secure encryption is based upon standards universal to all products. Choose the standard you need then see if it's supported.

BTW, it is not likely you actually need an especially secure encryption, they're all hackable and if you have especially valuable corporate property being transmitted, you'd pick a commercially rated managed router and switch, not the cheapest things on the internet. Even so, higher end gear also adheres to standards, a cheap box claiming it does WPA*** is as encrypted as the best in class that claims same encryption.

Learn an important fact: Security is not based on encrypted connections it is based on securing the clients and servers. Hackers are not sitting around trying to break into a system using a $15 router, they are looking to get internet access as a hotspot.

Important communication transfers already use encryption that makes the wifi encryption irrelevant. Ponder why you overlooked this and that it makes your concern fairly irrelevant.

#3 you make some great points but you don't need to be so darned arrogant about it (esp. your last quip).

#1, if you're really worried about it, I don't think there's something you can buy for the home market that's truly hackproof. I could be behind the times but a while back a hacker just had to use a (downloadable) program to sit there and "watch" the traffic go back and forth between a computer and its router. With enough samples of data it could start crunching the possible solutions to the encryption and with enough observed traffic and crunching it will guess it every time.

This is one of the reasons I ran old fashioned cat 5e lines in my house. That and I can get major bandwidth increases fairly easily by buying a router that supports it (assuming I already have the hardware that needs it on the other end). Wireless tends to be more expensive and complex.

But back to your problem- if you follow #2's advice, you should be safe from the casual hacker, and probably even the semi-casual hacker. It's just too much trouble to hack you. It's kind of like a car alarm- your car can still be stolen, but if there's another car without one the thief might move on to the next one.

If you have a real reason people would be looking to hack your data, I would say you need some kind of a VPN solution or other commercial grade-solution (like #3 is alluding to).

Where did all the thoughtful info come from?

Have all the flaming trolls left for vacation???

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed"><b>starchy wrote:</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="quote">#3 you make some great points but you don't need to be so darned arrogant about it (esp. your last quip). </td> </tr></table><span class="postbody">

I agree, I could have written a lot more text to make it all more touchy-feely, politically correct. Thing is, I'm just too lazy to do so.

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed"><b>Quote:</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="quote">#1, if you're really worried about it, I don't think there's something you can buy for the home market that's truly hackproof. I could be behind the times but a while back a hacker just had to use a (downloadable) program to sit there and "watch" the traffic go back and forth between a computer and its router. With enough samples of data it could start crunching the possible solutions to the encryption and with enough observed traffic and crunching it will guess it every time.</td> </tr></table><span class="postbody">

It's about whether someone is a <a rel="nofollow" href="/merchants/target-coupons-18/jump/" target="_new">target or not. Even with higher end multi-thousand dollar gear, it still uses the same encryption protocols (unless it's a proprietary PTP link), and today all of those are known hackable, IF the prize is worth the time to do it.

<table width="90%" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="3" border="0" align="center"><tr> <td><span class="genmed"><b>Quote:</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="quote">This is one of the reasons I ran old fashioned cat 5e lines in my house. That and I can get major bandwidth increases fairly easily by buying a router that supports it (assuming I already have the hardware that needs it on the other end). Wireless ... [Truncated]