With any wireless network, you want information you send to be protected from unauthorized access. Encryption is the process of encoding messages or information so that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption does not of itself prevent interception, but denies the message content to the interceptor.
Following are common encryption security protocols:
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Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP): The original encryption protocol developed for wireless networks. WEP was designed to provide the same level of security as wired networks. However, WEP has many well known security flaws, is difficult to configure, and can be easily infiltrated.
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Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA): Introduced as an interim security enhancement over WEP while the 802.11i wireless security standard was being developed. Most current WPA implementations use a preshared key (PSK), commonly referred to as WPA Personal, and the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) for encryption.
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Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2 (WPA2): Based on the 802.11i wireless security standard, which was finalized in 2004. The most significant enhancement to WPA2 over WPA is the use of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for encryption.
WPA2 encryption is the default for the Google Fiber Network Box. If you have an older Wi-Fi client that supports only WPA, you can use the advanced network settings to change it to legacy mode to support both WPA and WPA2. (Unfortunately, if you have an older device that requires WEP, that device cannot connect to your new Fiber Wi-Fi network.)
Make sure that the wireless encryption setting on any devices you want to connect to your network wirelessly do not require WEP-only encryption.