^{I welcome better key-wording here, both on tags and title.}

I'm trying to conceive a free, open and secure network environment that would work anywhere, from big enterprises to small home networks of just 1 machine.

I think since wireless Access Points are the most, if not only, true weak point of a Local Area Network (let's not consider every other security aspect of having internet) there would be basically two points to consider here:

• Having an open AP for anyone to use the internet through

• Leaving the whole LAN also open for guests to be able to easily read (only) files on it, and even a place to drop files on

Considering these two aspects, once everything is done properly...

What's the most secure option between having that, or having just an encrypted password-protected wifi?

Of course "both" would seem "more secure". But it shouldn't actually be anything substantial.

_{That's the question, but I think it may need more elaborating on. If you don't think so, please feel free to skip the next (long) part.}

Elaborating more on the two aspects ...

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 consider 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 building walls is for the cables. And giving pass-phrases would be adding a door with a key.

But the cabling without encryption is also insecure. If someone plugin all the data is right there. So, while I can see the use for encrypting data, I don't think it's a security measure in wireless networks. It's wasting resources for too little gain. I believe we should encrypt only sensitive data regardless of wires. That's already done with HTTPS, so I don't really need to encrypt my torrents, for instance. They're torrents, they are meant to be freely shared!

As for using passwords, they 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 we actually use passwords on our OS users, so let's go with that in mind.

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. But it's lacking the second aspect.

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?