Alternatives to WEP encryption?

[da.Guvna]

Wotcha chaps (and chapettes),

OK, I'm currently having a real pig of a time trying to keep my wireless network operational. I've got a Netgear DG824M 11mbps router with the latest firmware installed (v1.4 to my knowledge) and a Netgear WG311 54g PCI card in my pc.

It's been working like a beauty all summer, using the default netgear software which came with the PCI card to manage issues such as SSID's and WEP keys client side (as opposed to letting XP manage it).
However, since autumn set in and the weather turned somewhat fouler, the signal from my router seems to have degraded significantly. So much so, that I keep losing my connection altogether at the most annoying times, haha.

I remembered reading somewhere that you would get a stronger signal if you let XP manage the wireless settings, so I disabled the netgear stuff and did exactly that. It worked - "hurrah" - however, at the cost of my WEP security. You see, windows wants me to input a hex key for encryption, as opposed to the netgear stuff which would generate one for me from a phrase.....I don't know how to do that. Can it be any random string of numbers and letters (as long as they range from 0-9 and a-f), or does it have to be generated properly?

Does anybody know of a website/program that can generate one for me? (I can't copy & paste from my netgear util for reasons I can't be arsed to explain - just trust me, I can't even highlight the text).

I've cobbled togteher a temporary fix by telling the router to only allow specified MAC addresses to access the network, which seems to work, but I have my doubts.
I told it to let my main PC access the network, but did not list any other MAC addresses. I then connected my laptop up with a USB wifi adapter and tried to gain access to my PC with it.....and I was worried to find that I could happily browse my PC's chared folders from it (although it couldn't access the internet).
I then attempted to browse the shared files on my dad's pc (which is connected to the router via cat5) and it couldn't see it at all, which was encouraging but confusing at the same time.

I also heard that enabling WEP encryption weakens signal strength (god knows why), so I'm slightly reluctant to enable it again but I will if my bodged solution isn't secure enough.

Umm, so yeah, basically if anyone knows of any good 3rd party software for managing wifi networks, or for generating 128bit WEP keys from passphrases, I'd be really grateful if you could share the knowledge!

Cheers!

Andy

[Jiff Lemon]

If I remember correctly, after you enter your passphrase into the netgear, it generates a WEP key based on your passphrase and displays it. It'll be 11 digits long if its 128bit wep, or 5 digits if its 64bit.

[jsterling]

on the web bases router control panel there will be a page for setting up security. Basically all you do is where you previously chose your passphrase, and selected the line of encrytion (should have been 4 to choose from, all long strings) just write down the numbers and letters of the selected string and input them into windows.

[Jonny M]

If it let's you choose WPA instead of WEP, go with that.

[da.Guvna]

Haha, yeah, you're gonna hate me but I noticed that just after I posted!

Does nayone have any comments on the strength of my network's security as it currently stands? Can somone still hack their way in even if their MAC address isn't listed? I know you can spoof a MAC address, but they'd still have to find out what addresses were listed in the first place to know what to spoof.

I don't think it matters too much as I'm not even sure the signal would travel out as far as the road from our house, seeing as it barely makes it to my bedroom....plus I wouldn't credit the people round here with enough intelligence to even know what a WiFi network is, let alone hack one, haha!

Also, if I enable WPA, would it weaken the signal as well?