Customer Reviews

McAfee Wireless Home Network Security 2006 [Old Version]

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Excellent concept if you have more than one wireless computer on your system. Automatically rotates your security key code (WEP, etc) every 3 hours on all your wireless computers to make it less likely that anyone else can use your system, although not fool-proof. Slight difficulty configuring, but did recognize my wireless adapter and router. Problem is that I lost connectivity to the internet a lot more frequently using this software; so much so that I decided to remove it from my system. Once, I received an error message that "security key rotation failed". I use PC-cillin as my internet security/anti-virus. It may be that this program will gel more easily if you use McAfee products, but I don't know for sure.

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If you don't have one of the models listed on that page, there's not much point in purchasing this software. It's capabilities without a compatible router are quite limited.

I bought this product becase I was concerned about wireless security. I am familiar about the WPA security key but wanted something with a bit more punch. This wasn't it! It was hard to configure and it seems to be difficult to set up if you want to add another computer. I was also having problems adding new software to the computer. I had no choice but to remove the software from my computer,reset my router to its default settings,and go back to securing it with the WPA key. I feel is necessary to go secure in this age of id thefts and people piggybacking off your signal to get free internet. I feel that this product has come up short.

This might be a very good product, but I can't tell from the documentation or customer support. Since its purpose is security, the lack of confidence I have in it renders it unacceptable. The product will not let me access security settings because it reports I am not connected to a "protected network." My network does show up as secured, so I asked what the difference between "secured" and "protected" is. McAfee customer chat support, could not answer the question. They included advertising text from their product description and forwarded it in their responses. It was the same stuff on the box the product came in. Then they said they would email additional information and call me. They did neither. It could be I don't understand the terminology, as I pointed out to McAfee, but apparently, their customer support doesn't either. Two uninformed participants make for a lousy conversation.

I am a very concerned person for wireless security. I did a lot of research and tried different solutions with limited success. I was skeptical about this software at the beginning, but it works near perfectly. You have to know the basic settings of your router (username, password) and it does the rest. It creates a long WPA or WEP key (based on your selection). It rotates the key as often as you like. I do not get any error messages and can easily reconnect to my network.

It could be better if it was able to set up the MAC filter as well.

Limitations:
May not work with some routers, however worked with both Linksys WRTP54G and D-link DI-624 routers that I had.

Problems:
Once in middle of rotating the key my laptop had problem and I have to reset the router and set up my wireless security again. (I have been using it for more than 6 month)

My suggestions:

First thing you do with your router, change the generic username and password of accessing the router.

Second, set up MAC filter so only your own computers can access the internet and network.

Third, get this software for having the ultimate security. You can also set the WPA or WEP security by yourself but it is difficult and I do not think that you will generate a long and difficult to break key and switching it on regular basis.

WiTopia.Net's SecureMyWiFi and BoxedWireless offer similar products. Although they make it completely clear they are providing the highest level of security available (WPA-Enterprise) backed up by RADIUS servers (what a corporation or Government uses to ensure top knotch wireless security), it is hard to determine what exactly McAfee is doing here but providing glorified WEP (which has been shown to be easily compromisable) with a key rotation. They do enable "WPA" security but it looks like it may be just the "personal" kind which is weaker. Useful product that solves a big and growing problem but they need to make more clear what exactly they are doing to secure your network like WiTopia.Net and BoxedWireless.