ASCCI code or Hexa? How do I type them?

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Level 1

1 points

ASCCI code or Hexa? How do I type them?

Hello

Sorry to be so dumb😝 but as I want to create a local network between two computers the aid says I must give as security a code with 5 caracter ASCII or 10 hexa.

There : (sorry in french)

Tapez un mot de passe d’exactement 5 caractères ASCII ou de 10 chiffres hexadécimaux si vous choisissez « WEP 40 bits (meilleure compatibilité) » dans le menu local Sécurité.

I have a table of correspondance but how I enter thoses caracters. Do I have to type then as ASCII or normal?

Should I type GHI or 717273 in ASCCI or 474849 in Hexa?

Or maybe I use the Unicode Hex keyboard?

Sorry to ask so simple a question. And thanks for your answers

Cathy

Mac Book, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on May 23, 2012 12:09 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,088 points

May 23, 2012 3:15 PM in response to CathyLapin

CathyLapin wrote:

Should I type GHI or 717273 in ASCCI or 474849 in Hexa?

Since they want 5 in ascii and 10 in hex, I think you would not want to type something with 3 or 6, right?

If you choose ascii, that means you can use all the characters in ascii:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

If you choose hex, then you can only use the characters 0123456789ABCDEF

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Answer 2

BobHarris

Level 9

56,819 points

May 23, 2012 7:58 PM in response to CathyLapin

The idea password would be exactly 5 characters.

The reason for this is that WEP rules for turning a password into a WiFi key are different for Apple products vs Windows (and all ohter non-Apple) products. But it turns out that if you have exactly 5 characters in your password BOTH algorithms generate the same WiFi key.

That means if you mix Apple and non-Apple WiFi devices, an exactly 5 character password will work on ALL WiFi devices.

Mac OS X -> System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet Sharing ONLY Uses WEP security. If you are using 40-bit WEP, then the password should be exactly 5 characters. If you are using 128-bit WEP, then you want exactly 13 characters. No more. No less. If you do this, you password will work for all WiFi devices.

If you are using a WiFi router to setup your network (hightly advised) then you have the option of using the better WPA or WPA2 WiFi security, which has consistant password to key conversions rules across all WiFi devices (Apple included).

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