^{I welcome better key-wording here, both on tags and title, and I'll add more links as soon as possible.}

For some years I'm trying to conceive a wireless environment that I'd setup anywhere and advise for everyone, including from big enterprises to small home networks of 1 machine.

I've always had the feeling using any kind of the so called "wireless security" methods is actually a bad design. I'm talking mostly about encrypting and pass-phrasing (which are actually two different concepts), since I won't even considering hiding SSID and mac filtering.

I understand it's a natural way of thinking. With cable networking nobody can access the network unless they have access to the physical cable, so you're "secure" in the physical way. In a way, encrypting is for wireless what walling (building walls) is for the cables. And giving pass-phrases is adding a door with a key.

But the cabling without encryption is also insecure. Someone just need to plugin and get your data! And while I can see the use for encrypting data, I don't think it's a security measure in wireless networks.

As I said elsewhere, I believe we should encrypt only sensitive data regardless of wires.

And passwords should be added to the users, always, not to wifi.

For securing files, truly, best solution is backup.

Sure all that doesn't happen that often, but I won't consider the most situations where people just don't care. I think there are enough situations where people actually care on using passwords on their OS users, so let's go with that in mind.

For being able to break the walls or the door someone will need proper equipment such as a hammer or a master key of some kind. Same is true for breaking the wireless walls in the analogy. But, I'd say true data security is at another place.

I keep promoting the Fonera concept as an instance. It opens up a free wifi port, if you choose so, and anyone can connect to the internet through that, without having any access to your LAN. It also uses a QoS which will never let your bandwidth drop from that public usage. That's security, and it's open.

And who doesn't want to be able to use internet freely anywhere you can find wifi spots? I have 3G myself, but that's beyond the point here. If I have a wifi at home I want to let people freely use it for internet as to not be an hypocrite and even guests can easily access my files, just for reading access, so I don't need to keep setting up encryption and pass-phrases that are not whole compatible.

I'll probably be bashed for promoting the non-usage of WPA 2 with AES or whatever, but I wanted to know from more experienced (super) users out there: what do you think?

Is there really a need for encryption to have true wireless security?