Posted by rmcgowan on Wed 8 Mar 2006 at 08:32
I've been using the tutorials/reviews information from this site to try and set up my laptop to automatically detect the active network (cable at work, wireless at home) and set up the environment as appropriate. This has been slow going, due to a WEP problem I have. This begins with an Archos PMA430 (an audio/video/PIM hand held device) that has built in wireless networking. And it runs a Linux OS, using Qtopia (the most important secondary reason for its purchase).
The problem is that it supports only WEP encryption, at 40 and 128 bits. There is also no authentication capability, so if I want any security at all, its got to be WEP. And the more bits the better, I supposed.
My wireless router is a D-Link DI-624 (both twisted pair and wirelss). And, wouldn't you know it, the WEP support it has is at 64 and 128 bits, so I guess the 128 is all I can use if I expect to have the Archos connect to the Access Point in a secure manner.
So, I need to have support for WEP in the Debian GNU/Linux system on the laptop but all the tools I've looked at point to WEP at either 40 or 104 bits. Well, this clearly doesn't match the AP/router so I'm in a bit of a bind.
My laptop wireless adapter is a Linksys USB model WUSB54G rev 4, and I've found Linux drivers for it which I've downloaded, compiled and installed. Initially, I used an open source driver from Ralink Tech Inc., which worked well, including dealing with the full 128 bit WEP.
Then, I decided to build a new kernel (2.6.15.?, then 2.6.14.4). And this driver wouldn't compile any more. Or, rather, it compiled with a number of errors, one of which prevents it from loading (reference to a method called verify_area, which cannot be found). So, I got a driver for the same chip from an open source development site, http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com, from their CVS. This compiles and installs fine, but it has the WEP 40/104 bit encryption issue mentioned above.
Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of other drivers, support software or configuration/options to get 128 bit WEP encryption working on my laptop?
Thanks for your help.
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