By Derick Nigro

Today I received a question from a reader who asks; "I have 3 computers within my WLAN, should SSID broadcasting be enabled or disabled?" That's an excellent question and one that is often very misleading. Let me start by stating a simple fact. Disabling your Secure set identifier does not hide your network.

This is a common misconception that goes hand in hand with MAC address filtering which is also useless in deterring a hacker. Let me explain a little here. SSID brodcasting was never meant to be hidden. Its purpose is to essentially distinguish one network from another. When you disable your secure set identifier from broadcasting, technically all you are doing is hiding your WLAN beaconing on the Access Point. In other words, you are preventing the average person from seeing your WLAN. But there are 4 other protocols that also broadcast your network name, Probe requests; probe responses, association requests, and re-association requests.

So unless you have absolutely no activity on your network, which is highly unlikely, then it is impossible to hide your SSID. A hacker can easily find your hidden network within minutes. You may be asking yourself, okay so disabling broadcasting does not hide my network but in most cases it prevents my neighbor from stealing my Internet, so what does it hurt? Well that's what encryption is for. WPA and WPA2 prevent unauthorized access to your WLAN, thus preventing loss of data and bandwidth, so use encryption. If possible do not use WEP encryption. All that does is deter a hacker for 10 minutes or so. What does it hurt? Well, a hidden SSID can make wireless LANs less user friendly, it also forces your wireless devices to probe for your network, as well as cause some network devices from connecting at all. Another downside to cloaking your network is that it prevents others from knowing what channel your network is using.

If many computers use the same channel then network performance could suffer from Co-channel interference or CCI, which is interferance between radio transmisions. To summarize, I would personally leave SSID broadcast on. If a hacker is within range of your network chances are he will find your Access point regardless if your network name is broadcasting or not. It will also make your life easier if you need to allow another computer access to your network. I hope this article clears up any misunderstandings you may have had regarding SSID broadcast.

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