Re: WEP Issue - windows just works...

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Anthony Winter wrote:

> Just bit of a probably dumb-ass question after running into a scenario
> on my note book where I could quite happily log onto a new wireless
> access port under windows but not using Network manager under linux
> (FC3).  Under linux when I select the newly detected network (encrypted
> with WEP) I am prompted for the WEP key and three choices - Acsii, Hex
> and Passphrase.  Using the provided key none of these options worked.
> Switching to windows (XP Pro) I was prompted with one option - WEP key -
> which worked immediately (well actually I had to enter the WEP key twice
> - the second time to confirm there were no typos I guess).
> 
> I don't know what Windows is doing special, but can the 3 options using
> Network Manager be simplified to just have a user enter the WEP key and
> then the manager can just try the different options?  It kinda goes
> along the whole Network Manager ideal which is to just make it work!

That's more or less the idea.  But "passphrases" are what all the commodity 
wireless router manufactuers (linksys, dlink, belkin, netgear, etc) use by 
default, and they are certainly much more user-friendly than having to enter in 
a 26-character long hex key, like Windows makes you do.  You can go from a 
passphrase to a hex key, but not back.

So, to be able to try the passphrase, the user has to enter the passphrase, 
which has a differnet format than the Hex Key, which is slightly different than 
the Ascii key.  The people creating these standards don't seem to talk to each 
other :)  NM used to do something like this long ago, but the other major 
problem is that it takes _very_ long to connect to the access point.  We decided 
the tradeoff between forcing the user to know which type of key (and defaulting 
to passphrase) was acceptable versus the time taken to connect being longer.

Are you entering the WEP key starting with '0x' ?  If so, NetworkManager 
shouldn't be accepting that, but perhaps we should be silently discarding the 0x 
or something.

I'm also assuming your WEP key is 128-bit/104-bit...

Dan