7book + Avaya Silver + WEP

[frog]

Hi,

*reposted from 7book forum*

I've been using my N7book + Avaya Silver Card for a while now without any problems. However I've decided it's about time to use WEP. Has anyone had any luck getting WEP to work with the 7book/Netbook? I've got it working fine with my laptop, but the 7book simply doesn't seem to support it. I can see the card trying to connect, but eventually Opera just gives up- "unable to find host" or something similar. As soon as WEP is turned off on the base station and 7book, the connection runs fine.

Cheers,

F.

[frog]

I should also mention that this is 40 bit WEP, not 128 bit, connecting to a Asus 6030vi base station.

Cheers,

F.

[diem]

The chipset in your Avaya card is an exact match for that in my Enterasys card, and I have had success with 40bit WEP against both a DLink and a Buffalo AP. I would advise using alphanumeric keys (5 characters) at both ends.

Also, download NetstatRF from the 'Other Software' section of Brian Dushaw's page (http://faculty.washington.edu/dushaw/psion/netbook.html), since it will help you tell when you are within range of the AP and what SSID it is sending out.

[frog]

Diem,

Thanks for your quick reply. Annoyingly my AP only allows 4 hex keys to be specified, with no option for ASCII keys (pls see attached jpg). There is an option to 'create with passphrase' but that passphrase is not an ascii key as I understand it.

I've googled about to see if it would be possible to specify a hex key on the AP and then use a tool to convert that hex into ascii for use on the 7book, but it doesn't look like that's possible.

Cheers,

F.

[ktkawabe]

Hi,
HEX key is simply a hexadecimal representation of a normal (usually ASCII) string. Just create a text file containing a 5-letter key, open it with a binary editor and you see the hex representation of the key on screen.

Just some examples:
ASCII HEX
---------------------------
abcde 61 62 63 64 65
AbCdE 41 62 43 64 45
Beans 42 65 61 6e 73

i.e. if you set the HEX key "61 62 63 64 65" on your access point, you should set the text key "abcde" on your netbook.

If you're not familiar with HEX-ASCII conversion, for example the following web page does the job for you.
http://www.rvs.uni-hannover.de/people/einhorn/jstools/wepkey.html

[frog]

Hi,

Still no joy- the 7book refuses outright to encrypt. I've even tried resetting the 7book from the ground up, re-entering the connection details. Netstat reports the connection status as 'Trying to connect', and underneath lists my APs SSID in the 'Connected to' area. Everything else is '0' with the exception of 'Current tx rate: 2mps' and 'Rx FCS errors: 100%'. When a connection is trying to initialise, both lights on the card light up simultaniously briefly- this happens about three times, so it looks like the netbook is trying to handshake. It's just occurred to me that it may be possible to telnet into the AP and see if there is any communication logged- I'll try that next and report back.

Once again, with encryption turned off on the 7book and the AP, the connection runs fine.

Thanks for your help so far.

Cheers,

F.

[diem]

I've tried the link Keita supplied and it worked for me; I entered the text of the Psion's key 1 (all four keys entered, all identical) and put the resulting HEX into all four of the AP's entry boxes (mine's a DLink DI-614+), selected 'HEX' at the AP and all worked just fine.

You said in your original post that you'd used that card and WEP successfully with a laptop, so it would seem to be something to do with the 7Book. Do you have power management enabled or somesuch? I am at a loss as to what to suggest, if you have made a successful WEP connection with the card in another client machine.