&gt; Problem with 802.11 isn&#x27;t the radio layer, it&#x27;s the security.<p>True. It&#x27;s a damn shame about WEP, and WPA2 didn&#x27;t happen until 2004. But, 2004 is <i>eleven</i> years ago. Disgregarding the shitfest that is WPS-PIN, WPA2 with CCMP is looking rather good.<p>Are you aware of breaks in WPA2 with CCMP-only crypto and either a well-chosen passphrase, or WPA2-Enterprise with a proper client authorization scheme?<p>&gt; ...it&#x27;s simply not possible to get a 1999 wifi card on a modern wifi network in any half-secure fashion.<p>Not saying that there <i>are</i> any WiFi cards that behave in this manner, [0] but would a hypothetical WiFi card that <i>only</i> knows how to how to establish and pass around -er- frames(?) on a 802.11a&#x2F;g link and relies on the client PC to use the frames passed back and forth to do link crypto &amp; etc be<p>* Possible<p>* Reasonably sufficiently fast, given enough CPU power on the client<p>* Able to cope with any likely enhancements (such as the addition of WPA2 back in 2004) with a driver update, rather than a firmware update<p>?<p>[0] Even though I <i>thought</i> that pre 802.11ac Atheros cards had open firmware <i>and</i> open drivers, so one got <i>pretty</i> close to this.