questions re WEP keys

[Gene Heskett <gene heskett verizon net>]

Greetings;

I have a situation where I would like to generate long keys, 128 bit, and 
in fact have done so.

The lappy is running FC5, recent kernel.
But from the messages I see in the logs, and what I see in 
knetworkmanager, it appears that the only key length supported by 
knetworkmanager is a puny little 40 bit key.

The radio in the lappy is a bcm43xx.  The access point is an elderly wap11 
version 1.0.  Ignoring knetworkmanager, I have edited the same keys into 
both the keys-wlan0 file on the lappy, and in the uploaded keys to the 
wap11 using the wap11gui.

FWIW, this all worked just fine using ndiswrapper rather than the bcm43xx 
module back in May of last year.

But, when I attempt to bring up wlan0, I see the access point being 
synchronized with by way of agreeing on the mac addresses that can talk 
to each other.  The mac addresses logged are correct.  The next step, if 
the bootproto=dhcp, is the issuance of a quad of DHCPDISCOVER packets 
over a period of about a minute, none of which are ack'd.  These 
DHCPDISCOVER queries are being issued to 255.255.255.255.  Is this 
correct?  The router is enabled to service 50 clients for dhcp, and I 
would expect such a query to be sent to the gateway address listed in 
ifcfg-wlan0, which is in the 192.168.x.x range.

However, I can set bootproto=none, and setup the stuff in that same 
ifcfg-wlan0 file, and get virtually the same results except it fusses 
that the address is already taken, which AFAICS it is not.
As I see it, the wap11 is probably filtering the requests with its MASK of 
255.255.255.0, but what do I know...  Its 'gateway address' in its setup 
is the same as here, the local address of the router, a 1/18/2007 version 
of dd-wrt running on an x86 box.

What is the next thing to check?

Thanks.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.