I checked with my son Chris, (
www.warewolf.net) and he provided the following:
For jcyuhn:
Several of SMC's products (
www.smc.com) support multiple VPN client pass-through, which might solve the problem of he and his wife being unable to connect to their work VPNs simultaneously; a wireless version that claims to do this is the SMC7004VWBR for about $104+ street.
For Ken300D:
Even if you change the SSID from the manufacturer default, and enable 128 bit WEP, wireless still presents many problems. The SSID can be sniffed out of the air using freely available software such as NetStumbler (
www.netstumbler.org) unless your access point supports setting up a closed network (i.e. not responding to the probe frames where the SSID is set to null/broadcast, and not sending out beacon frames) then there is a fair chance that the network can be found. Also, even with WEP enabled, unless you're changing the keys regularly (which is a pain to do manually especially across many clients) or are using an access point implementation that assigns keys dynamically, or if you're using a product that has a vulnerable implementation of the RC4 cipher used in WEP, then chances are your keys can be cracked relatively easily (using AirSnort or WEPcrack, etc.).
Also, though it may seem counterintuitive, don't require that your wireless clients use WEP to associate with the access point. Though this may seem like it decreases security, it prevents you from being vulnerable to a certain attack which would expose your WEP keys without too much trouble on the part of the attacker. Use WEP just for data encryption, not for association (if your access point provides that option).
One product line that is immune to these two particular problems (the WEP vulnerabilities and the broadcast SSID issue) is the ORiNOCO product line (
www.orinocowireless.com). However, there are other issues attendent to wireless networks (interference from anything else in the 2.4 GHz ISM spectrum, such as cordless phones or microwave ovens), so unless mobility is a chief concern, wired is still preferable for many reasons over wireless.