a question about wep

[dave3]

ok I have wep setup and working. A few questions.
Q1. 5 character key =40 bit encryption and 13 character key=128 bit encryption right?

Q2. how does the different bit levels effect battery life/thruput on the handheld?

Q3. I know 40 bit is pretty weak, should I be using 128 bit instead?

Q4. What happens if I ever 'lose' my wep key setting. Wouldn't this make my ipaq's 802.11 unusable on that particular wlan?

Thanks :D
edited update wep doesnt work! I believe I setup shared key correctly both on pci card (usr 2215) and on ppc. to make a long story short I got a green light on ipaq all night long but it refused to load any pages! ANY IDEAS ANYONE?
posted from ipaq 5550 :oops: :oops: :oops:

[Sooner Al]

...these links which may help you...

Mixing Encryption Levels...

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/mixed_wep.htm

WEP Troubleshooting...

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/wireless_encrypt.htm

WEP Key Generator...

http://www.warewolflabs.com/portfolio/programming/wepskg/wepskg.html

One way to safe guard your WEP key is to use a program like eWallet to securely store information like that, ie. passwords, WEP keys, bank information, etc. Of course if your office network administrators change the WEP key and don't tell you then that is another matter...

[Anthony Caruana]

Q1. 5 character key =40 bit encryption and 13 character key=128 bit encryption right?
I assume when you say 13 character that you mean 13 hexadecimal (really 26 characters in 13 pairs)
Q2. how does the different bit levels effect battery life/thruput on the handheld?
I've used my NIC with and without Wep and could not tell if if impacted battery life.
Q3. I know 40 bit is pretty weak, should I be using 128 bit instead?
yes. I would also recommend the use of Mac address based access Control and turning off ssid broadcast if you can.
Q4. What happens if I ever 'lose' my wep key setting. Wouldn't this make my ipaq's 802.11 unusable on that particular wlan?
If you control the access point and you forget the key you can always create a new one. Otherwise you will need to get it again from who ever controls the access point

[Janak Parekh]

Q1. 5 character key =40 bit encryption and 13 character key=128 bit encryption right?
I assume when you say 13 character that you mean 13 hexadecimal (really 26 characters in 13 pairs)
Actually, I suspect he means ASCII (which some wireless cards support explicitly; for others, you need to use an ASCII-to-Hex conversion table). Yes, 5 characters are used for 40bit WEP keys, and 13 characters for 128bit.

--janak

[dangerwit]

The other questions were answered well by others... just some more input on these:

Q2. how does the different bit levels effect battery life/thruput on the handheld?
I have not seen any effect on throughput since the radio cards themselves handle the encryption, and so it occurs quickly. To your point, I don't believe the encryption actually makes the datastream larger, but for security, it'd be a worthwhile trade-off if it does get larger.

Q3. I know 40 bit is pretty weak, should I be using 128 bit instead?
Yep, if security matters. They say an 'unscrupulous' user would need to capture -- what was it? -- 10 (?) MB of data to crack a 128-bit WEP encryption.

Also, changing your SSID will always help, to include chars like "<>+.!@#" and mixed upper/lowercase, numbers, etc. If you have the option, as Anthony suggested, disable SSID broadcast on the access point and 99% of the sniffers won't be able to connect to your setup. I consider SSID broadcast the biggest breach of security etiquette. :)

edited update wep doesnt work! I believe I setup shared key correctly both on pci card (usr 2215) and on ppc. to make a long story short I got a green light on ipaq all night long but it refused to load any pages! ANY IDEAS ANYONE?
If you have a green, solid light, it usually means you're connected to the access point, meaning the WEP key is okay. I'd check net settings first, or, turn off WEP and try connecting again without changing anything else. Also, I've heard that 128-bit schemes are usually proprietary to the manufacturer, but I can't confirm that -- I can use my D-Link at 128-bit to connect to a Cisco 128-bit, so who knows. :)

*Phil