Irish, I have a feeling our poor connection has as much to do with the age of the router than anything. It's probably about... oh... 5 1/2 years old or so, and it wasn't the top of the line at the time I bought it. It was a "free after rebate" thing from Best Buy.

I've always assumed that at some point we'd upgrade it and our new router would be sending out a signal powerful enough to reach the neighborhood, and that at that point, security would seem like a bigger deal. That, and the fact that if others tried to tap our connection it would seriously impact the speed we achieved. Right now my connection is plenty speedy so long as I'm in range. The range is just severely limited.