"Nope every client needs to send a handshake every so often "
Right, but I am not sure I am understanding, or you are not understanding my question. I have ONE laptop that connects to ONE wireless router, a few hours a week. If that laptop is turned off, then the router won't be doing anything, and there will be no clients, so no traffic to pick up on, right?
Just trying to be clear, as I do not want to have misunderstandings about security.
--Dan
Yes as long as there are no other clients. Not sure I would even bother with wifi if all I had was one client Many people tend to have several devices as clients such as smartphones, laptops, networked media players, game consoles, Bluray players, DVRs, etc.
If you think disabling SSID makes your system more secure go for it, but please be clear in understanding it does not actually increase the security of your network one bit. Since you are running WPA, why bother with disabling SSID? It does not make sense to me.