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No way of connecting unless unsecured?

gadgetgirl85

gadgetgirl85

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Mar 24, 2006
3,807
373
For ages I tried to set up my network but it wouldnt accept my wep password. Then finally I made it unsecured (took off the wep) and it would work.....could it be that my password thats the problem? I have it unsecured at the moment but im not happy to leave it that way. Should I try changing the password to something more basic? Schaef (a mac rumors member) was very patient with me setting this up :) thank you so much. Could someone give me some advice? hate leaving it unsecured
 
Unsecured WEP

I'm in a similar situation. See:
128 bit wep procedures mac-pc
Hi, I have a PC joined to a Belkin wireless router by ethernet cable and 3 other PCs joined by wireless. My main machine is an Imac running the latest Mac osx. We've just suffered a powercut and the only way to enable all machines to work was to reset the Belkin and to disable all wep 128 bit/26 character passwords. I've tried for hours trying to join with a (differerent) 26 char password but to no avail. Does anyone know of an instruction manual to download (and yes, I have searched this forum and AppleHelp).

... So if there is an answer out there it would make 2 people very happy!

Thanks

Richard
 
I'm not really happy to have an unsecured network so if anyone can help!
 
When you use WEP (which is very insecure, btw) and you enter your password, are you entering the ASCII password as you entered it on the router, or the HEX password that the router undoubtedly translated it into?

Try the hexidecimal version of your password.
 
Tried both versions of my password didnt work :( (I think) I dont mind not having on wep as long as its secured somehow
 
Again.. WEP is a complete joke. Anyone who is savy enough to sniff your wifi traffic is savy enough to break WEP. Just so you know.


What kind of router is it?
Perhaps experimenting with a different password and therefore a different hex password?
 
at the moment its 10 characters long mix of numbers and letters. Its a Dlink wireless rounter? 802.11g or something like that
 
My brother has a D-Link and he hates it, but I'm pretty sure he had to use a 13-character password. Try it and see what happens. In future, don't buy cheap knockoffs ;)
 
viccles said:
I'm not really happy to have an unsecured network so if anyone can help!
Click to expand...

If you can't get WEP to work at all, then at least you should be able to tell the router that you want an unpublished network (I don't know exactly what it would be called, but it doesn't get displayed automaticaly, you'll have to type in the network name to connect), and you can tell the router to only accept connections from certain MAC addresses (you find each Mac's MAC address as follows: About This Mac, More Info, click on Network on the left side. And each computer has an MAC address, has nothing to do with the name Macintosh)

Hackers will be able to get in, but they can get in with WEP as well. It is enough to prove criminal intention if anyone gets in.
 
Would someone please be able to tell me how to set it only so that my 3 computers can access the network? something about a mac address
 
gnasher729 said:
you find each Mac's MAC address as follows: About This Mac, More Info, click on Network on the left side.
Click to expand...
^^^
That is how you get your Macintosh's MAC Address.

(Said Macintosh not to confuse)

On a PC, go to:

Start > Run > Type CMD > Type ipconfig/all > press enter > take note of the "Physical Address" (That is the MAC address)

Then, login to the network admin panel and go to "advanced". Apply a MAC filter and type in your MAC address for each computer.
 
I'm in the same boat at the first 2 posters. My password, which worked just fine for 2 windows machines on a netgear router, won't work with our macbook. I tried everything that was obvious to me but in the end had to leave it unsecured.

So much for "it just works."
 
VoodooDaddy said:
I'm in the same boat at the first 2 posters. My password, which worked just fine for 2 windows machines on a netgear router, won't work with our macbook. I tried everything that was obvious to me but in the end had to leave it unsecured.
Click to expand...

I've never personally had this problem (with Netgear, Linksys, or Apple routers)... but I've heard anecdotally about routers that get hexadecimal and alphanumeric passwords confused somehow, and users having to use $ followed by their hex password (as mentioned above).

This seems to be much more of a problem with WEP than WPA. Can you use WPA2, or at least WPA1? WEP isn't a credible security protocol anyways...
 
I went through the same thing with my macbook. I have 3 PCs using my wifi network. I got my first mac a month ago and it was never able to connect to my Linksys network. I was on the phone with linksys for over an hour and they would only work with PCs and I was on the phone with Apple for longer and they siad they dont know linksys routers. No one could help. I was forced to make it unsecure.

The best I could do is change my network name to "IwillHACKyou" hoping to ward off freeloaders. My sister complained that the neighbors will think I'm a serial killer so now my network name is "SecuredWiFi", and its still unsecured. Bottom line is my macbook is being a jerk in regards to my network. :(
 
I just purchased a new-to-me iBook, and am connecting to my home network via a Linksys router. I had no luck connecting the iBook with 128-bit WEP encryption, but when I switched to 64-bit WEP and entered my 10-digit hex code preceded by a "$", it connected fine.

I'm almost entirely new to the world of macs, so I was pretty psyched that I got it working all on my lonesome. :cool:
 
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