iPad does not fully support WEP
I have a Linksys WRT54G router running v2.04.4 firmware in my home. It has been working well for years with a T400 ThinkPad and an AMD PC, both running Windows XP. The T400 connects using the native wireless hardware. The PC connects using a Linksys Wireless-G USB adapter (Model WUSB54GC). Wireless SSID broadcast is disabled on the router. The router is configured to use WEP 128-bit encryption on wireless connections. A passphrase is specified which generates four different keys which are 26 hex digits long. The router is configured to use the third of those keys. Why key 3 rather than key 1? Just to keep potential hackers guessing.
I gave my wife an iPad for Christmas. The iPad would not connect to the router. After several hours reading Apple iPad fora entries Christmas evening (and finding many conflicting claims regarding what works and what doesn't), I gave up when I read divein72's post of a few hours earlier (at http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=12811051), "I've been trying to get my wife's new iPad connected all morning without success. I tried the HTTP Proxy AUTO setting and it still won't Connect, do I need to do something with the URL?"
My wife, being more pragmatic than me, drove slowly around our neighborhood until the iPad offered a connection to an unencrypted wireless router. She parked in front of that house and surfed the Internet from her new iPad for several hours. The next day, she discovered that a near neighbor had apparently gotten a Netgear router for Christmas and fired it up unencrypted. The iPad was able to connect to that router from inside our house.
During my feeble attempts to get the iPad to connect to our router, when the iPad prompted for a password, it was completely unclear for which password it was prompting. Was it prompting for the passphrase used to generate the keys? Was it prompting for a 26-digit hex key, which was challenging to type without error and which can't be cut&pasted on the iPad? If it was prompting for a 26-digit hex key, the obvious one to provide was key 3, but there was no setting on the iPad to inform the iPad that key 3 was being provided rather than key 1 or some other.
The next day, while phishing on Google (not in iPad fora), I found a reference to an Apple article at http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20428 which explains how to enter a WEP password into Mac OS X. The reference suggested that the same weirdness is required on an iPad. That is, the 26-digit hex password must be preceded by a dollar sign ($). Or was it a hash (#)? Can't remember for sure. In any case, we tried entering key 3 with a leading $ (or #) and voila, the iPad connected.
Things were great for 24 hours, until the DHCP lease for the IP address expired. The iPad was unable to renew the DHCP lease. We futzed with it for a while trying to get it to reconnect, but weren't very maniacal about it, since my wife didn't want to enter the almost untypable 26-digit hex key every day.
She went back to using the Netgear router.
After ruminating on everything I had read for a few days, I reconfigured the router to use a WPA Pre-Shared Key. It was not clear whether I should use TKIP or AES. I found conflicting claims on the Internet, some saying only TKIP would work, some saying only AES would work, some saying neither would work with an iPad. I was unable to get the PC (which connects using a Linksys Wireless-G USB adapter - Model WUSB54GC) to connect to the router when using WPA. Sigh. The most promising suggestion to resolve that issue was to upgrade the router to the latest firmware level and to upgrade the Windows XP device driver for the Linksys Wireless-G USB adapter to the latest level. No guarantee that dual upgrades would resolve the problem, though. I did not bother to try to get the iPad to connect using WPA. I switched the router back to WEP key 3.
A week or so later, the Netgear router disappeared. Another SSID appeared at the same time. Our neighbor had gotten around to encrypting the router's wireless connection.
I reconfigured my router to use WEP key 1. I was able to easily reconfigure the T400 ThinkPad and the AMD PC to connect. No surprise there. The iPad was also able to connect by entering the almost untypable 26-digit hex key. No leading $ sign weirdness needed.
We held our breath for 24 hours. The iPad was able to renew its DHCP lease successfully.
I agree with other comments on this forum that Apple can not claim that the iPad supports WEP until it fixes the problem that the iPad does not correctly support WEP keys other than 1.
BTW, while trouble shooting, it was useful to find that when accessing the WRT54G's administrative interface using a browser, one can view the list of the router's DHCP clients using Status -> Local Network -> DHCP Clients Table.
I gave my wife an iPad for Christmas. The iPad would not connect to the router. After several hours reading Apple iPad fora entries Christmas evening (and finding many conflicting claims regarding what works and what doesn't), I gave up when I read divein72's post of a few hours earlier (at http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=12811051), "I've been trying to get my wife's new iPad connected all morning without success. I tried the HTTP Proxy AUTO setting and it still won't Connect, do I need to do something with the URL?"
My wife, being more pragmatic than me, drove slowly around our neighborhood until the iPad offered a connection to an unencrypted wireless router. She parked in front of that house and surfed the Internet from her new iPad for several hours. The next day, she discovered that a near neighbor had apparently gotten a Netgear router for Christmas and fired it up unencrypted. The iPad was able to connect to that router from inside our house.
During my feeble attempts to get the iPad to connect to our router, when the iPad prompted for a password, it was completely unclear for which password it was prompting. Was it prompting for the passphrase used to generate the keys? Was it prompting for a 26-digit hex key, which was challenging to type without error and which can't be cut&pasted on the iPad? If it was prompting for a 26-digit hex key, the obvious one to provide was key 3, but there was no setting on the iPad to inform the iPad that key 3 was being provided rather than key 1 or some other.
The next day, while phishing on Google (not in iPad fora), I found a reference to an Apple article at http://support.apple.com/kb/TA20428 which explains how to enter a WEP password into Mac OS X. The reference suggested that the same weirdness is required on an iPad. That is, the 26-digit hex password must be preceded by a dollar sign ($). Or was it a hash (#)? Can't remember for sure. In any case, we tried entering key 3 with a leading $ (or #) and voila, the iPad connected.
Things were great for 24 hours, until the DHCP lease for the IP address expired. The iPad was unable to renew the DHCP lease. We futzed with it for a while trying to get it to reconnect, but weren't very maniacal about it, since my wife didn't want to enter the almost untypable 26-digit hex key every day.
She went back to using the Netgear router.
After ruminating on everything I had read for a few days, I reconfigured the router to use a WPA Pre-Shared Key. It was not clear whether I should use TKIP or AES. I found conflicting claims on the Internet, some saying only TKIP would work, some saying only AES would work, some saying neither would work with an iPad. I was unable to get the PC (which connects using a Linksys Wireless-G USB adapter - Model WUSB54GC) to connect to the router when using WPA. Sigh. The most promising suggestion to resolve that issue was to upgrade the router to the latest firmware level and to upgrade the Windows XP device driver for the Linksys Wireless-G USB adapter to the latest level. No guarantee that dual upgrades would resolve the problem, though. I did not bother to try to get the iPad to connect using WPA. I switched the router back to WEP key 3.
A week or so later, the Netgear router disappeared. Another SSID appeared at the same time. Our neighbor had gotten around to encrypting the router's wireless connection.
I reconfigured my router to use WEP key 1. I was able to easily reconfigure the T400 ThinkPad and the AMD PC to connect. No surprise there. The iPad was also able to connect by entering the almost untypable 26-digit hex key. No leading $ sign weirdness needed.
We held our breath for 24 hours. The iPad was able to renew its DHCP lease successfully.
I agree with other comments on this forum that Apple can not claim that the iPad supports WEP until it fixes the problem that the iPad does not correctly support WEP keys other than 1.
BTW, while trouble shooting, it was useful to find that when accessing the WRT54G's administrative interface using a browser, one can view the list of the router's DHCP clients using Status -> Local Network -> DHCP Clients Table.
iPad, Other OS
