WPA-Personal requested encryption not supported error

Question

Level 1

19 points

WPA-Personal requested encryption not supported error

I have an iMac G4 with an airport card installed (NOT an airport extreme). The card is recognised by the system profiler which displays it as firmware version 9.52.

I'm trying to connect to a wireless network hosted by a SpeedTouch 580 wireless broadband router. The encryption is using WPA-Personal, but whenever I try to connect to the network I get an error "The wireless network <network name> does not support the requested encryption method". The exact same settings and procedure allow me to connect flawlessly from my PowerMac G5.

I've run the system updater and have all available software updates applied, but to no avail. I also tried temporarily removing all security from the network, but that resulted in a straightforward "unable to connect" error from the iMac.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can get this to work??

Thanks, Adrian.

Posted on Nov 5, 2005 3:52 AM

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Answer 1

Henry B.

Level 9

78,713 points

Nov 5, 2005 9:25 AM in response to A Colyer

Make sure the Speedtouch router is configured for WPA with a pre-shared key (PSK) and TKIP encryption - not some other encryption type.

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Answer 2

Modem Geek

Level 4

1,110 points

Nov 5, 2005 9:53 AM in response to A Colyer

Adrian, is the SpeedTouch set for WPA2 (or WPA2 & WPA) or just WPA? If set for WPA2 of (WPA2 & WPA), you might try downgrading to WPA only (TKIP) since the old AirPort cards don't support WPA2.

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Answer 3

A Colyer Author

Level 1

19 points

Nov 5, 2005 11:32 AM in response to Modem Geek

It's definitely set for TKIP. I'm beginning to think the "encryption not supported" message is just a poor error message that doesn't mean anything more than "I couldn't connect". I found one other case on the internet with the exact same symptoms - and that turned out to be due to the antenna cable not being properly connected to the airport card. (Yes, I've checked mine several times 😉 ).

I suspect I may be suffering from some antenna-related problem too. Even if I set the network to open, I still can't connect, and the signal strength meter in the "Internet Connect" always shows no signal at all. I tried creating a computer-to-computer connection between my two macs as well (bypassing the router completely) but that didn't work either. Should I be seeing some signal strength in the meter even before I've connected to any network? Are there any more detailed messages written to a log anywhere that I could examine??

Thanks, Adrian.

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Answer 4

Henry B.

Level 9

78,713 points

Nov 5, 2005 11:39 AM in response to A Colyer

The "signal strength meter" won't register a signal until after you connect to a wireless network.

Yes you are correct - this error message is not specific and will occur if for any reason the Mac fails to establish a wireless connection. You have already removed all security from the router ie:
- SSID broadcast enabled
- no MAC address filtering
- no WEP or WPA
... yet the Mac still fails to connect?

Have you tried manually switching the channel your router transmits on (try either 1 or 11, 13 if you live in the UK or Europe).

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