I think I might now know why there are so many unsecured wireless computer networks around.
I could never understand this, it seems so stupid to leave your network wide open. Security is easy enough to set up with MacOS X, a snip with a Nintendo DS – I even managed it using command line tools on a cut-down version of Linux.
Then I tried to get 3 different Windows XP laptops to talk to my wireless network; I entered my SpeedTouch 570 router’s SSID, I carefully added the WEP key, I used ipconfig /all at the Windows command line to get the MAC address of each wireless card so I could add them to the router’s permitted list of MAC addresses. Nothing. Each time the only way I could get the Windows XP machines to see my network was to disable WEP entirely – hence why I now see why many people might think ‘soddit, I’ll turn the security measures off’.
In the meantime, I did discover that partially dropping security might help – by default my router only allows computers with the correct SSID to connect; turning off that basic security measure seems to have helped. But why should Windows XP force me to drop my security? Even a toy like a Nintendo DS can manage it.