Securing a wireless connection?

just wondering, can your ibook see the router when your using WEP? can it see it without?

you may want to try configuring only the MAC addresses of your ibook and your pc to connect to the router.

Play Around with the Settings

I had the same problem with two Macs. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what I did on the first one, so it took a bit of finagling to get the second one to work correctly.

I expect that you're using WEP 64-bit or 128-bit encryption; I use 64-bit. Find your password (not your passphrase - the passphrase might be four letters, but the password is a series of incomprehsible letters and numbers). Get into your AirPort configuration, where it lets you enter a password. Don't go through the setup assistant; enter the password manually. You're going to have to play around with the various settings. If memory serves, the one that worked for me was ASC-II 10 Character (even though my password was fewer than 10 characters). Try your password in the other types until it works. This should get you up-and-running.

Just a sidenote: from what I've read, WEP doesn't provide strong encryption, meaning people who know what they're doing can break the password. I can't imagine that your neighbors have any desire to hack into your network though, and I myself use the weaker 64-bit encryption to make the Windows machines in my house happy. I believe WPA provides stronger encryption, but I don't know if Macs support it, let alone your router.

Mike LaRiviere

yeah, i use WPA on my powerbook with AE, it works fine. i have noticed a proformance hit though, i still get like 3MB/sec, not spectacular but its fine for surfing.

128 bit worked for me

I had troubles setting up WEP on a mixed PC and Mac home network. Trying with 64 bit you get the choice of four possible keys where you can choose one as the primary. This didn't work for me at all. Just got refused from the network all the time.

Switching to a 128bit key took away the possibility of having four keys and gave me something definitive to use. Yup, it's a pain having to type in a long stream of hex pairs, but it worked. First time. You only have to type the string in once as well. Everything goes on to autopilot after that.

If you want to go further you can specify the mac addresses as well and as for WPA... I'm not that advanced yet!

rapps said:

Hi,
I have an ibook that is connecting wirelessly to my Belkin Wireless Router. The router is hooked up to a PC with an ethernet cable and the ibook is wireless. I want to secure the connection so nobody can steal the signal, etc. When I hook into Belkins online config and set up a WEP and I select a password......the ibook won't connect. How can I secure this connection so both computers are secure?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I have the Belkin wireless router too, but as others have suggested use WPA instead of WEP its more secure. Also make sure you turn of the Broadcast SSID. This stops the router from announcing its existence and the only way to log in to it is if you know the router name you gave it. When you log on to it with your iBook you can add it to the keychain so it remembers it, but people can't just randomly connect to it.