mac / openwrt problems?

[da]

Dear Lazyweb,

I ran into a networking problem with my mac this evening. I was at my friend emaki's house, and tried to connect to his wireless network. I chose his network, changed the encryption-choice from "WEP Password" to "40/128-bit hexidecimal key" and typed in the appropriate WEP key (from a piece of paper which he's used with other house-guests before).

My trusty mac... said the key was incorrect.

I tried each of the menu-options (WEP Password; ascii WEP key) and none of them worked.

Anybody know of a reason why a mac with built-in airport-extreme wouldn't work with a linksys router running openwrt?

(I'm looking for something less-obvious than "you had the wrong key", which I think we might rule out.)

Also, he didn't have any sort of MAC-address locking.

*shrug*

Anyway, had a good evening; watching british comedy, eating fusion curry and so on. Just a bit frustrated why my computer didn't work, esp. when I'd just told Eric "the great thing is everything Just Works..."

Comments

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Because you hadn't paid homage to the Network Gremlins in his house yet. They require an outpouring of tasty emotion to lure them away from the bland-but-nutritious aethereal packet stream.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Try putting it in quotes. I have no idea why, and I don't see the point in being vaguely hand-wavey about it, but sometimes with Macs connecting to non-Airport routers, you have to put the key in quotes.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Wow.

That's one I would'nt have guessed. And I even tried swapping big-end for little-end.

How odd. totally odd. (Like you, I'm coming up with hand-wavy explanations in my head, but none of them really seem reasonable given the care mac takes with other stuff.)

I'll let you know if that was it, next time I'm there. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Mostly for my own edification the next time I have to look this up; but:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=42682

suggests:

- leading $ or
- change the key by using a pass-phrase exactly 13 characters long (!?)

Or, I suppose we could've turned off WEP for the duration, if we're monkeying with the key anyway.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had to use a leading $ for my very first router. I'd forgotten about that. :) Isn't this stuff fun?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

No. ;)