wep problems

Hi,


About a week ago, one of our laptops has started having problems
connecting with the router. The laptop is an inspiron 5100, xp home
sp2, and the router is a netgear. The router's a couple years old and
doesn't have wpa.


The laptop will connect without encryption, but when wep is turned on,
it will detect the network but can't connect. No software changes
recently, and the router settings haven't been touched since it's been
working. The only thing I can think of that might have changed the
wireless software is an automatic update. I've tried system restore,
but no luck. I reset the router as well, but no change.


Any ideas?


Thanks



hunwalla@gmail.com

On 25 Aug 2005 08:19:16 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>Hi,
>
>
>About a week ago, one of our laptops has started having problems
>connecting with the router. The laptop is an inspiron 5100, xp home
>sp2, and the router is a netgear. The router's a couple years old and
>doesn't have wpa.

Any particular reason you didn't bother to supply a model number for
your Netgear router? I really want to know why. It seems that
EVERYONE that posts quesions in this newsgroup seems to consider the
model numbers of their hardware to be unimportant or unworthy of their
time and attention. Is it some fear of numbers that causes a deep
psychological aversion? Perhaps you find it necessary to provide an
additional challenge to those that try to answer questions? Please
don't feel that I'm picking on you as I do this to everyone that fails
to supply what hardware they're working with.

>The laptop will connect without encryption, but when wep is turned on,
>it will detect the network but can't connect. No software changes
>recently, and the router settings haven't been touched since it's been
>working. The only thing I can think of that might have changed the
>wireless software is an automatic update. I've tried system restore,
>but no luck. I reset the router as well, but no change.

Common problem. The problem is that there are two algorithms for
converting an ASCII WEP key to Hex. Windoze XP only supports one of
them. If you're unfortunate enough to have incompatible hardware, WEP
will fail. To insure maximum frustration, Microsloth doesn't bother
to supply any useful diagnostics for encryption key failure. All you
get is a 45 second delay while it proclaims "Obtaining IP address"
which eventually changes to "Limited Connectivity...". Neither of
these brilliantly conceived messages offer any clue that the WEP key
exchange failed.

The easy solution is to use a Hex key instead of an ASCII key. I do
this on all my systems because I'm tired of running into this problem.
Yes, the Hex key is 26 characters long, a pain to type, and impossible
to remember, but I can't fix that. Try Hex, it should work.


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
AE6KS 831-336-2558

> Any ideas?

Leave WEP off?

Hi Jeff,

I'm not home now, so I don't have a model number in front of me, but
I'll post it when I get home if you think it will help. I assumed it
to be a problem on the laptop rather than the router, so that's the
info I provided.

Some more info:

The connection had been working correctly, until it didn't. There were
no software, router config, or system setting changes within at least
several days of the problem, though system update does install
automatically. The system does connect with WEP off. It does not
connect with WEP 64bit or 128bit enabled.

I have another inspiron 5160 xp pro sp2 that does connect to the router
with WEP on.

As for the key, I am using the hex key. I'll repeat, the connection
settings - including the key - had not changed when the problem began.


For the moment the connection is secured only by a mac address access
list. I'll run a few tests tonight. I have a DSL modem/WAP which will
use WPA or WEP. I'll try it with both. I'll also try booting with a
mepis livecd and connecting to each router router. This should help
narrow down the source of the problem.

I'll post the results, as well as the router model number. Any other
info that might be useful?

heh, at the moment, that's what I'm going with

I know wep doesn't provide much security from real hackers, it's on
mainly to keep the neighbors from digging through our shares, and the
current mac solution is probably good enough for that.

I'm more concerned that her laptop isn't working correctly, and she
might have problems later on if connecting to someone else's network.
That and, dammit, it should just work.

If I knew why it didn't work, and it was just, say, a cost of the way
I'd configured things, it wouldn't be all that critical to fix it.

On 25 Aug 2005 16:50:41 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>I'm not home now, so I don't have a model number in front of me, but
>I'll post it when I get home if you think it will help. I assumed it
>to be a problem on the laptop rather than the router, so that's the
>info I provided.

Assumption, the mother of all screwups. I've lost count of how many
Windoze boxes have had mysterious registry changes after updates,
installs, uninstalls, power glitches, hardware changes, and just
running programs. However, if you've tried system restore without
success, methinks it's a fair assumption that there was no mysterious
registry change.

Incidentally, one recent issue with encryption failure turned out to
be something rather dumb. The customer insisted that they were typing
in a Hex key. However, when I finally was able to figure out what
they were doing, I found that they were typing in Hex into the ASCII
box on the config utility. If your key length is 10 or 26 hex digits,
you're doing it right. If it's 5 or 13 digits, you're doing ASCII.

>The connection had been working correctly, until it didn't. There were
>no software, router config, or system setting changes within at least
>several days of the problem, though system update does install
>automatically. The system does connect with WEP off. It does not
>connect with WEP 64bit or 128bit enabled.

That leaves:
1. Mis-typed WEP key on the Dell 5100 client.
2. Wireless Zero Config doing battle with what I'll guess to be
Intel Proset utilities talking to an Intel something MiniPCI
wireless card.
3. MAC address filtering on the router.
4. IP address filtering on the router.

>I have another inspiron 5160 xp pro sp2 that does connect to the router
>with WEP on.

That means the router is fine. That does NOT mean that the router
settings are correct.

>As for the key, I am using the hex key. I'll repeat, the connection
>settings - including the key - had not changed when the problem began.

A few weeks ago, I had a client with a similar problem. Out of
nowhere, Windoze XP SP2 decided that her laptop needed a "Network
Bridge" installed. Check the "Network Connections" thing in the
control panel and see if this has appeared. Anyway, it messed up
connectivity rather badly.

>For the moment the connection is secured only by a mac address access
>list. I'll run a few tests tonight. I have a DSL modem/WAP which will
>use WPA or WEP. I'll try it with both.

>I'll also try booting with a
>mepis livecd and connecting to each router router. This should help
>narrow down the source of the problem.

Well, that will hopefully eliminate the hardware as the possible
source of the problem. However, so much of the Intel Centrino
functionality is tied up in software, that I doubt that this will show
much, especially since the card does work without encryption.

>I'll post the results, as well as the router model number. Any other
>info that might be useful?

1. Model number of the MiniPCI card used in the Dell 5100 laptop.
2. Using XP SP2 Wireless Zero Config or Proset to run the card?
3. Proset version number.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831.336.2558 voice http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
# http://802.11junk.com
# (E-Mail Removed)
# (E-Mail Removed) AE6KS

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> I know wep doesn't provide much security from real hackers, it's on
> mainly to keep the neighbors from digging through our shares, and the
> current mac solution is probably good enough for that.

If all you want to do is keep the neighbors from seeing your shares, just
don't expose Netbios to the net. Block ports 137-139.
--
derek

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
>I know wep doesn't provide much security from real hackers, it's on
> mainly to keep the neighbors from digging through our shares, and the
> current mac solution is probably good enough for that.

That's actually a misconception. Lots of people will tell you that hacking
is easy, and will even say that WEP is weak and easily hacked. These are
people who have never hacked into anything in their life. The reality is
that WEP is fine for most users. The issue with security is whether
something is *really difficult to hack or *nearly impossible to hack. I just
finished testing many security protocols, and the reality is that there are
a lot of steps involved, you have to know Linux (and I mean, *know Linux),
you have to be within range of the network and run software for maybe an
hour or more. Also, hacking is *illegal, so people will need to be happy
with the idea of being a criminal.

- JB

> That's actually a misconception. Lots of people will tell you that hacking
> is easy, and will even say that WEP is weak and easily hacked. These are
> people who have never hacked into anything in their life. The reality is
> that WEP is fine for most users. The issue with security is whether

Really? http://www.crimemachine.com/Tuts/Flash/wepcracking.html

Just download the ISO, burn to CD, boot up and follow the tutorial and
crack away. Half an hour if you take a long time.

> something is *really difficult to hack or *nearly impossible to hack. I just
> finished testing many security protocols, and the reality is that there are
> a lot of steps involved, you have to know Linux (and I mean, *know Linux),

Follow the tutorial above.

> you have to be within range of the network and run software for maybe an
> hour or more. Also, hacking is *illegal, so people will need to be happy
> with the idea of being a criminal.

It's only a problem if caught!

David.