Re: [Wirelessdriver-support] WEP, Apple Base Station, Orinoco Gold

[Rob M. <ro...@ma...>]

On Monday, July 22, 2002, at 09:33 PM, Esver Camacho wrote:

> If an original Apple Base Station (Graphite) has been updated 
> does it now support 128 bit encryption? The Orinoco Gold is the 
> 128 bit encryption version of the card. Does this combination 
> work?

No, it doesn't.

This is not a limitation of the hardware, but one of licensing.  
The original graphite base stations used Lucent WaveLAN Silver 
cards inside and, while they are electrically similar to Apple's 
Airport card (Apple buys the hardware from Lucent), Apple cannot 
update/upgrade them with firmware or features that Lucent is not 
willing to release for those cards.

Think about it:  If your company had a stack of silver cards 
they bought for $100 each and they found out that if they had a 
graphite base station they could convert them to gold cards and 
make them worth 3 or 4 times as much, how many accountants would 
it take to make that decision?

>
> While at MacWorld, the press room had a wireless network which 
> was password protected. I could get in while booted in OS 9 but 
> not in OS X. When I input the password under "Use WEP 
> encryption with text version of hex key" I had a signal but 
> could not connect to the web or scan for the base station.
> --
> Esver Camacho
>

That sounds more like an issue with not having a copy of the 
correct network equivalent password.  If you could connect in OS 
9 but not in OS X, then it's not a hardware issue, but a problem 
with either the driver's WEP support or the configuration.

-Rob