Does WEP slow down wireless?

[Sp00n]

I managed to resolve a wireless problem I have been having on and off for the past year or so, basically the connection seems ok for a day or two after a reboot but then it will just be crap, the signal doesnt change but the speed of the connection just becomes unusuable.

I was using WEP to start with as i was new to wireless at the time and never bothered to change it up until last week when i got fedup of putting in the 28 character hex password.

So i changed it over to WPA-PSK and low-and-behold the wireless connection now works perfectly for all devices and I havent touched the router since.

My question is, has anyone ever come across WEP causing wireless problems/slowness? It could be a coincidence but I wanted to know if there was a technical reason behind it.

 

[errata]

Surprised its an issue for WEP as that the oldest format of security (did you try less than 128 bit) hardware and drivers should have been mature (assuming the manufacter of the wireless in the oruter or PC end ever had a WEP only chip)

If you has said WPA or WPA2 the ealiest implmentations had less hardware support and the overhead in processing did affect performance.

Just speculating but I wold guess either the router or PC wireless hardware chip is from a maker who spent more time on the WPA or better implementation as thats whats in demand now.