McAfee Wireless Home Network Security 2006 review

Despite attempts to make wireless networks easier to configure and more secure, they're still quite difficult to use.

McAfee's Wireless Home Network Security is designed to take the guesswork out of the process with one-click network security for all wireless networks.

According to McAfee, it does this by connecting to your access point (AP) automatically and configuring its settings. We were dubious of these claims, and we were right to be. Wireless Home Network Security can do this only with certain access points. Unless you have a supported one, the software fails and refuses to connect.

It's also important to have the right firmware revision. We had two Linksys WR54GS routers, but only one of them worked with this software. McAfee releases updates, but with so many models and firmware versions available it's hard to keep up.

If you have a supported access point, Network Security works really well. It automatically reconfigured our access point for secure WEP access, which offers greater compatibility with older clients. However, you can force it to use the more secure WPA-PSK encryption if you prefer.

With both types of encryption, the software changes the key automatically after a standard interval. This means that if an intruder gets hold of the current key and joins your network, their network access will soon be terminated.

Network Security comes into its own when used with other PCs. You get five licences in the box, so you can install the software on all your PCs. Once you've created a secure network, other PCs can join it only if a PC currently on the network gives them permission. The software handles this automatically with pop-up windows, so it's very easy to deal with.

When another PC joins your network, it receives the key changes automatically. However, this works only with computers that can have the client installed on them, so other computers, such as Macs or games consoles, will not work with this system.

You can get around this by forcing Network Security not to rotate encryption keys, which will enable you to configure other clients for access to the network.

Of greater concern is the fact that Network Security doesn't automatically reconfigure the administrator's password for your wireless access point. You can do this manually, but the option is tucked away. The password is also displayed in plain text, so anyone with access to your PC can find out what it is.

If you find a network that isn't protected by McAfee, Network Security acts just like the Windows Wireless Zero Configuration client, except that it doesn't mask WEP and WPA-PSK keys by default, so those who can access your PC can read them. You can force it to mask these settings, but we think this should be automatic.

When it works, Network Security works really well and makes it much easier for other PCs to connect to a protected network. However, we found lots of unsupported routers in our labs, and you have to disable some of the security features if you want to use devices other than PCs. We'd rather configure our wireless settings manually.