-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dan Williams wrote: > On Sat, 2008-04-19 at 23:56 +0000, Stefán Freyr Stefánsson wrote: >> Hi again. >> >> It seems that my previous bug report was invalid. I have already closed the >> bug and added a comment explaining it. >> >> I had missed one combination when trying to connect to the wireless network, >> namely selecting "Open System" and "WEP Passphrase". Using that combination >> brought up the wireless network without a hitch. >> >> But this mess of mine raises a question of why the UI has to be this >> complicated (I know, I know... most of you are probably thinking that it >> isn't and you're probably right... but let's say for arguments sake that I'm >> the typical idio... I mean user). Maybe it really is necessary, I am not >> anywhere close to being any sort of an expert on wireless networks (as is >> clearly evident from my screwup before). >> >> But just bear with me here (and this may be a discussion that has already >> come >> up and been settled, apologies if that's the case). >> >> 1) Why does a user have to select between HEX and ASCII? It isn't difficult >> at >> all to take the string that is entered, check how many characters it has and >> whether there are any non-hex characters and tell from that what kind it is. > > It's possible to detect HEX vs. ASCII, yes. ASCII is either 5 or 13 > ASCII characters, while hex is either 10 or 26 hex characters. > >> 2) Passphrase may be a little more difficult to "autodetect"... I'm not >> quite >> sure how exactly that works anyways so I shouldn't really say anything here. >> Is there anyone who sees a way of eliminating that choice as well? Of >> course, >> one way would be to say that if it's not an ASCII or a HEX key, then it >> probably is a passphrase, and if it looks like an ASCII or HEX key but >> doesn't work as such, then try it as a passphrase? I don't know... just an >> idea. > > Passphrases are up to 64 characters of any type. This is the big > problem, because valid hex & ASCII keys are also valid passphrases. And > I've personally seen quite a few cases where what _looks_ like a HEX key > is actually a passphrase.
I guess you COULD tell though that something that is the wrong length cannot be a hex or ASCII key. That would be a help, I would think. > WPA fixes this issue by specifying that hex keys are 64 characters long, > while passphrases are between 8 and 63 characters, so you can tell by > length alone here. You just can't do this with WEP. > > It's interesting to note that Mac OS X requires the user to choose > between WEP Passphrase and WEP hex/ASCII separately. > >> 3) Open System vs. Shared Key? I have no idea what the difference between >> the >> two is!? Is there no way to autodetect this? Would a brute-force way (trying >> one and then the other) be possible here? > > Unfortunately, you have to know. Since WEP does not put any info about > encryption into beacons, we can't autodetect this. And also due to the > way WEP works (and the linux driver stack), you usually can't easily > detect whether the AP has rejected your association request because of > the wrong auth method. It has never seemed to make any differences what I select on this one. I'd have to mess with my settings to see, but I'm actually not even sure how to get the answer to that out of my [Linux 2.4] AP machine. Seems to "just work" on my client machine anyhow. - -- ---- _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ |Y#| | | |\/| | \ |\ | | |Ryan Novosielski - Systems Programmer II |$&| |__| | | |__/ | \| _| |[EMAIL PROTECTED] - 973/972.0922 (2-0922) \__/ Univ. of Med. and Dent.|IST/AST - NJMS Medical Science Bldg - C630 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIH+wcmb+gadEcsb4RAmKvAJ9ULqcTQgnr8fRviPVaw55h5fZaYQCfZ5nX ym2OtzzepaStpkRieNyYQ7U= =cf/k -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
begin:vcard fn:Ryan Novosielski n:Novosielski;Ryan org:UMDNJ;IST/AST adr;dom:MSB C630;;185 South Orange Avenue;Newark;NJ;07103 email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] title:Systems Programmer II tel;work:(973) 972-0922 tel;fax:(973) 972-7412 tel;pager:(866) 20-UMDNJ x-mozilla-html:FALSE version:2.1 end:vcard
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