I haven’t really mentioned it here on the weblog or anything, but over the course of the past three months or so, the Cody household has really bought into the Apple product brand.
Bit of a backstory: Back in October, we got Jenny a new 14 inch iBook which was a big hit. Then we discovered the world of wireless network access by purchasing an Airport Extreme wireless connection point. For Christmas, I got her an iPod mini, and we’re now living the digital lifestyle just like Apple sells on TV!
Anyways, one of the problems with the Airport Extreme was that it wouldn’t work when Chuck or Russ would bring over their Windows based laptops. Their laptops would show a signal from our Airport Extreme device, but they couldn’t connect to the Internet through the base station. I chalked it up to a mixture of me not knowing a whole lot about wireless and Windows being Windows.
However, last week in an effort to clean up some of the clutter of ethernet cables around the house, I got a wireless NIC for Jenny’s Windows PC. After I installed it, configured it, and connected it to our Airport Extreme base station, I couldn’t get to the Internet, just like Chuck and Russ couldn’t before then. Again, it showed an active solid signal to our wireless network, but wouldn’t connect to the Internet.
So, in an effort to save anyone else who has the same problem time and effort, I’d like to share the solution that allowed me use wireless Windows PCs with our Airport Express base station:
Turn off WEP on the base station and the Windows computer and reconnect.
Once you do, the Windows PC will be able to connect to the base station and through it to the Internet. It’s not the best or most secure solution, but for the time being it works. I’m going to try to figure out a way to get Windows PCs and Airport Express base stations to work with WEP turned on in the future, and will post any updates here.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
You’re right – it works great! I’m in my car outside your house with my laptop right now, and I’m on the internet. Thanks!
Bryan stole your internet and my comment.
WEP encryption? LOL, FYI, it can be cracked in like 2 hours or so…
You should put a NoCat server inbetween your Airport and your LAN. That way you can control who’s accessing your Internet connection.
If you are doing anything over the wireless to an internal file server, you should try and encrypt that traffic like with SSH or some sort of VPN…
WEP is crap, IMHO. AES, I believe, is going to be the latest and greatest…
Mark
WPA is the only real solution when it comes to wireless security.
However if you are stuck on WEP, one of the problems with WEP is that the actual standard relies on a 10 character HEX key for 40bit WEP and a 26 character HEX key for 128bit WEP.
In order to make things easier for people, vendors use certain algorithms to convert simple alphanumeric passwords (or passphrases) into HEX keys, thus enabling people to use simple memorable WEP password rather than lengthy HEX keys.
The problem is that different vendors use different algorithms to generate the HEX key and therefore a ASCII password on an AEBS will be hashed differently on a Netgear client and vice versa.
One thing is a 13 character 128 bit WEP password will be hashed by all vendors in the same way (if you use 40bit WEP then a 5 character password is required).
AirPort: Joining an encrypted wireless network
Choosing a password for networks that use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
I’ve got Win PC up on wireless here, Dan.
These next lines apply to a regular airport (not rolling in dough like the Cody’s, I don’t get the latest gear ;{>} ):
Configure the airport for encryption, using the passphrase. Now, look in the airport admin utility for the ASCII HEX encryption string. (Select Base station, configure option, wireless hex equivalent password.)
Open the wireless configuration utility on the PC, and locate the place where you can enter the network key (different for different cards, so I can’t be more specific). Select a key format of hexadecimal digits, and then type in the hex you wrote down from Apple utility.
Reason: Apple uses a different encryption algorithm for the passphrase, so entering the passphrase on a win box gives you a different binary string, and it’s the binary that unlocks the door.
QED
Thanks for the feedback so far.. I’ve got WPA running, and that seems to work nice, but it turns out that linksys doesn’t provide WPA functionality under windows 2000 with their network cards, and recommened you download and buy some 3rd party software to do it.
Anyone know the best/cheapest way to get WPA working with win2k?
What if you received the passphrase from your nehibor but don’t want to bug him to look up the network key and all that, is there a generator?