problem getting wep to connect to network
 

Hello fellow users. I recently switched my router and got one from verizon that has wep key. I used the windows computer and typed in the wep key when it asked and it worked fine. Now to my suse 10.3 box, I have atheros card and therefore use madwifi. When I activated knetworkmanager to connect to the internet, of course it asked me for the ESSID and the wep passphrase and it couldn't find my router for some reason. I reinstalled madwifi and the same thing happened. Does atheros and madwifi support encryption or not? How do I resolve the problem? Thanks

-bhert

The computer not seeing your router and your wep key not working are two different problems. Can you see your router in the list in Knetworkmanager? Can you see ANY routers in the list? If you can see your router, but can't connect with your key, I've had the same issue. I simply changed the key from "open" to "shared" and it worked fine. Sometime I have to change from "passphrase" to "10/104-bit hex" too. I would think you could see the router, even if it was encrypted using knetworkmanager. You just can't connect to it without a key. Are you sure it's broadcasting its essid? You can go to the command line, log in as root with "su" and your password, and type "iwlist wlan0 scan" (where "wlan0" is your interface) and see what all routers it finds. Keep in mind that Knetworkmanager has a tendency to be buggy, too. :(

well, I used the iwlist command and it did find the router. it shows the MAC address, frequency, essid, encryption being on, etc. when i tried to connect again, it said that the connection could not be established. seems like it's rejecting the encryption key to the router. I even changed to shared. Nothing. any ideas?

Have you tried shutting the encryption off to see if you can connect to the router without it? That's usually a good thing to do to make sure things are working. If you can connect without encryption, you know the problem is the key. I'm not sure what else to try...short of that or just playing with the key settings.

I have a windows dual boot so if the key worked for windows, maybe the key won't work for suse cause the wep key already been activated for windows.

I wonder if the same ip address from windows and suse will cause wep key to fail for suse since windows key is already entered? I don't know if the wep key can be entered twice from the same ip address.

-bhert

I played around with the settings in knetworkmanager and couldn't get the network to work. I even tried to access the router's configs and entered the password but it wouldn't let me. I think the router has it's own security that prevents me from accessing the configs. I would get to the password part of the router, everytime I typed in a letter, it shows like I typed in 5 letters.
I converted the key to hex but it didn't work also.
By the way, is the wep key the same thing as wep passphrase?
Thanks

-bhert