Airport/3rd Party WEP Compatibility

[MacFan25863]

Hi there,

I have a new PowerBook 12 inch. I wanted to intergrate it into my older wireless network, which has a Speedstream 2624 802.11b router. I normally have 64 bit WEP encryption enabled, to basically keep the wardrivers off my network, and on my neighbors instead. On my PB (this is the first time I have used a Mac on a wireless connection), it detects the network, but when I enter the password, it says that there was a problem connecting to the network. I tried selecting all the options for password type, but none worked. I tried changing the setting on my router to 128 bit encryption, but I get the same error on all password options.

So, for now, I have WEP turned off. But I don't really like that, because, even though WEP is crap at protecting me, it does deter the people driving around with laptops (who will hopefully use my unprotected neighbors network and not mine).


So, am I missing something, or is Airport only compatible in WEP mode with Airport routers?



Thanks,
Sean

 

[Rod Rod]

I can answer the last part of your last question: wep will work with 3rd-party access points. I've gotten it to work on my new PowerBook at a buddy's house. maybe you need to reset your access point, create a new password and then enter it on all your wireless computers. otherwise, MAC address filtering is probably more effective than wep/wpa. I think MAC address cloning takes more time and effort than cracking wep/wpa, but of course I could be wrong. but whatever you do, disable SSID broadcast.

 

[kaylee]

Hi

i had the problem myself when trying to get a friend's powerbook to work on the wireless network here at home (netgear router). Basically i had to step up the encryption from the 64 i was using to 128bit.

The other thing i had to do (which i found out from these forums actually), was rather than use the WEP password to access the network, was use the WEP 40/128 bit HEX - and entered the actual key generated by the password/passphrase - i was able to find this out from the config application on one of the other computers in the house.

And i agree with the other response - its a good idea to disable SSID broadcasting, and to use MAC filtering. I filter so that only certain MAC addresses are allowed to access the network, plus i also have it set so the router will hand out a specific IP to each of the allowed MAC addresses.

 

[ftaok]

Also try putting a $ or # in front of the password when trying to log on with the Mac.

 

[Anticipat3]

A lot of third party routers actually use Hex Keys.

When you put it into your mac, you need to enter "0x" before the hex string.

this here:
http://www.warewolflabs.com/portfolio/programming/wepskg/wepskg.html

is a handy little tool that will tell you what the hex is based off of the ascii key, so then you just enter "0xHEXKEYHERE" as your password.

Enjoy

 

[Celeron]

A lot of third party routers actually use Hex Keys.

When you put it into your mac, you need to enter "0x" before the hex string.

this here:
http://www.warewolflabs.com/portfolio/programming/wepskg/wepskg.html

is a handy little tool that will tell you what the hex is based off of the ascii key, so then you just enter "0xHEXKEYHERE" as your password.

Enjoy

I have a Linksys WRT54G and I'm using 128bit WEP and I've never had to enter 0x or whatever when I entered the HEX value. I just copy the HEX key generated by the router setup and paste it into the "128bit WEP HEX" option. Currently I'm using WPA which is much better than WEP.

Ultimately, to answer your question, yes it works with 3rd party routers, you just need to select the proper option from the Airport configuration menu.

 

[MacFan25863]

Ok, the HEX code worked. Thanks you guys!


Oh, Celeron, I would love to use WPA, but my Router dosn't support it, and there is no firmware update for it

 

[Bruce Lee, PhD]

Ok, the HEX code worked. Thanks you guys!


Oh, Celeron, I would love to use WPA, but my Router dosn't support it, and there is no firmware update for it

Does anyone know why apple doesn't support using WEP passphrases? It seems that every PC client and every router I know of supports them, but not apple. It's tedious and seems pointless to have to enter the hex key by hand. I had actually assumed that there was some hashing mechanism specified in a standard somewhere which was used to create the encryption keys from the passphrases. Perhaps this is wrong?

 

[kaylee]

Firstly - good to see that the Hex key worked for you MacFan25863.

Secondly - Im not sure if you have to use the Hex key if you are using Airport Cards with an Airport Base Station.
But one thing i do know, is that my Netgear router doesn't enforce that passphrases for 128bit WEP should be 13 characters - i assume it pads the rest out with god knows what if your passphrase is shorter. But even with a 13 character passphrase on the netgear stuff, we still could not get my friend's powerbook or my ibook to access the network using the passphrase.

For the comment about the annoyance/hassle of manually entering a hex key - you only have to do it once, and then you can save it to your keychain, so its not really all that different to using the WEP password option. I've not had to enter the hex key since getting my ibook set up for the network here. Unlike one of the windows PC's (netgear card) on the network - until the wireless config software got an update, it kept forgetting the configuration, and was not able to generate keys from a passphrase (oh the fun of entering hex keys over and over).

 

[caveman_uk]

Does anyone know why apple doesn't support using WEP passphrases? It seems that every PC client and every router I know of supports them, but not apple.

IIRC you have to put the passphase in double quotes e.g. "passphrase". I seem to remember this from the last time I looked. I use the hex key method though....

 

[Bruce Lee, PhD]

For the comment about the annoyance/hassle of manually entering a hex key - you only have to do it once, and then you can save it to your keychain, so its not really all that different to using the WEP password option. I've not had to enter the hex key since getting my ibook set up for the network here. Unlike one of the windows PC's (netgear card) on the network - until the wireless config software got an update, it kept forgetting the configuration, and was not able to generate keys from a passphrase (oh the fun of entering hex keys over and over).

I agree that it's not a big problem in practice if you know what you're doing. But I bet passwords work perfectly with airport base stations...