WPA Vs WEP

I have a couple of 10.4.11 Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros and a 10.5.1 Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. So far, all have been OK using WPA2 (personal) with the ActionTec MWR424 router (Verizon FiOS) and the Belkin wireless router that proceeded it.

The 10.4.11 MBP connects fine via WPA and WPA2 (personal) to our church's Linksys WRT54G router and the various Nortel and Cisco wireless access points at work. So, I don't think it's necessarily a 3rd party router issue, but specific to certain combinations of Netgear routers and versions of the router firmware. There are several Netgear routers, for example, on the list of supported routers for use with "Back to My Mac" feature of .Mac, for example.

Check with Netgear to see if there's an update for your router's firmware and try that.

For the record, WEP is perfectly acceptable as a means to prevent casual logging into your router by neighbors (i.e., to prevent unintentional connections). WEP is not a defense against intentional unauthorized access to your router/network. For that you need WPA, or better yet, WPA2.

I've never had connectivity issues, so I can't comment on whether 10.5 addressed them.

it is not an intel macbook problem... but it's a problem apple introduced since 10.4.10

Leopard is no better. There used to be huge thread about this. 10.4.9 worked flawless, but for some reason apple seems not able to fix this issue.

Hi... I have exactly that problem... By the way, all this is related to using an Intel based MacBook Pro... On Tiger I never upgraded beyond 10.4.9 because I heard about a lot of issues with 10.4.10... And on 10.4.9, I was able to use WPA encryption with my Netgear router, no problem... However, being the early adopter of new OS's when I installed Leopard, from the getgo I lost the ability to connect to my Netgear router with WPA... WEP or simply shutting encryption off, however, works fine... What's more interesting is I have an older Belkin router and on a lark I hooked it up and tada, WPA works fine with Leopard... I did check to be sure I had the latest firmward for the Netgear router and I do... I have other problems using the Belkin router so for now I have switched back to the Netgear router and simply use WEP until I figure out some fix...

To say more about what actually happens when I try to connect to the Netgear router using WPA (or WPA2) when I attempt to do so, it ALWAYS asks me to enter the password even though I long ago told keychain to remember this password and to always allow... I enter the password and click OK (or whatever the prompt says). I usually then get "connection failed" after a few seconds... Once in a while I get "invalid password" (though I know it's the correct password)... What's most interesting is if I just keep trying by just continue to click OK or try again or whatever it says (all this without reentering the password but instead just leaving it as it was originally entered), after say four or five tries, it WILL SAY IT'S CONNECTED... All indications show that it connected successfully and if you run the Network Assistant, it will say the same thing, ie., that you're connected ok... But in fact, you're not connected at all... if you try to access anything on the internet, it fails... Strange... So back to WEP I must go...

Anyway, clearly there IS some sort of issue between Leopard and CERTAIN routers, in this case and it sounds like what Apple told you also, NETGEAR routers...

That's my story... Any wisdom from anyone would be much appreciated... thanks... bob...

...A follow up to my recent post regarding no WPA connection with Leopard and a NetGear router... I called AppleCare recently... After walking me through a number of tests and experiments, none of which helped, the AppleCare tech claimed to have no other useful ideas... I had been considering trying an Airport Extreme base station to see if it would solve all my networking issues and after talking with Apple, I decided to give that a shot... Bought an Airport Extreme 11n router later that day... After one moment of confusion walking through the wizard, otherwise the setup was trivial and WPA/WPA2 worked like a champ... I had previously commented that an older Belkin router I own also worked regarding WPA but that it had other issues with respect to Port Forwarding required by a security camera I have... But the Airport Extreme also handled the Port Forwarding without issue... The Airport Extreme also connected to my wife's PC trivially... In summary, so far I am very happy and very impressed with this new router... Easy to set up and so far it has solved all my wireless and wired networking issues.. Granted my choice to purchase this was prompted by leopard clearly having issues with some 3rd party routers but I had sort of wanted to try the Apple router for some time anyway... So now I found my reason to give it a shot... Works well... Just tossing that out... bob..