you may have some nice neighbors stealing your internet for free. Yes you may see your speed get back up to normal if this is the case and you secure it so they can not get on to it. You can check in the router to see what computers are connected and see if any of them are not your own.

I would just make it secure even if it is not the problem, becuase it keeps you safer. After you make it secure post back with your results.

To make it secure how do i find the Security Encryption Key (for WEP), it says passphrase and Key1 ,key2 ,key3, etc... Do i just make up my own? Also, should i do an Access List?

first you have to make your router secure. log into it (usually type 192.168.1.1) in your browser and then set it up to use WEP encription at 128 bit. It will ask you for your passphrase and you will make one up. It will then turn your passphrase into a set of keys which you can type into your individual computers.

Just a thought, will 128-bit affect gaming speeds, so should i set it to 64-bit if it does? I'll post the results in a day or two to make sure its in effect.

it will not affect gaming speeds. I have 128 bit wep with an xbox 360, pda, 3 desktops, and 8 laptops all at the same time wireless and i notice no difference from when i had it open before.

ok, speeds have gone better by a little bit, but not as fast as in the morning (i guess thats when people aren't using the internet), because on morning when i have no school, my lag on Counter-Strike is around 30 ping and download speeds are around 150 Kb/sec. At night though, even with a secure line it hasnt improved too much.

What kind of network are you on? Campus? Cable? DSL? T1? What is the physical setup? Are you in a building with a lot of other people in your close proximity?

First things first: security

Make sure you have a secure password on the router itself. Incorporate symbols like @$#%! - harder for hackers to guess. If I'm a hacker and I know your password and had the desire I would know exactly how to get into your wireless settings to read your key. The point is that if your router has been compromised setting wireless security will be pointless. Do a factory reset on the router, set the password fresh and complex...then establish your 128-bit WEP key. Also - WEP keys are penetrable...two days to break it within 1200ft. Might be a good idea to change it periodically if you really think someone is getting in there. The likelihood of compromise is pretty much dependent on whether your password is secure or not...you make the call.

If you see slowness during certain times of the day it's probably either an issue of shared bandwidth, such as at a college campus, or signal degradation on the wireless due to some kind of interference. It could also be that the servers you're hitting, or the bandwidth providers they use, get over-loaded at those times.

If you're on a Linksys wireless, in a heavily populated area, I would suggest setting the wi-fi channel to 5. The problem I've seen at my house/work is that the signal to my access points seem to get interference from other access points in the area operating in the same sliver of frequency band...they usually have options to set channel 1-12. For instance, Linksys, operates on channel 6 by default, all of them...so I have at least three or four in my neighborhood. I found that other channels than 6 don't seem to work well on my Linksys but when I go to 5 my signal stays strong. You can use an app called NetStumbler to learn more about what's going on in the wireless background. You should also change the name of your access point and if possible hide the SSID for your access point to avoid stragglers. Turning on MAC filtering would be another good option, although, also penetrable.

Yeah, I thought the speed cahnging during different times of the day was shared bandwidth. I'm using DSL, but i don't think there's much else i can do to improve speds, thanks everyone, speeds are kind of normal anyway.

Two Days? With two lappys,one as a talker and one as a listener, you can do it in 2 hours.