Router Setup and Security

[Ralph]

Since this site was down the past week or so I purchased a Netgear 624 Router and the Netgear 511t wireless Adapter to give me some more mobility around the house . Everything was working just great on the default settings but as is my style "tweak it until it's broke " . I started to increase security by enabling WEP at 64 bits and was doing well until I tried WPA encryption . I locked myself out , couldn't get anywhere and was on the line to India for over an hour trying to get the system back up . I'm up but I'm not sure of the settings . Should I just stay with the default , go with WEP @ 64 or 128 or WPA ? Security is important to me but not at the expense of slowing my system to a crawl . I don't share files and rarely do anything other than browse . I want to stay clear of viruses , tracking bugs , and bad hackers but still want to browse and enjoy the web . Thanks for your advice , Regards , Ralph