[reemas]

i have two questions:

1.) when i use my powerbook as a wireless router, is there a way to see who is connected to my internet connection (or my powerbook)?

2.) when i set a WEP password, 40-bit or 128-bit, i CANNOT get my windows laptop to connect. it detects the network, but says it couldn't connect. however without a password it works fine.

please help. thanks in advance.

[ghporter]

I can help with the WEP issue, but not with the PB-as-a-router issue.

Apple equipment interprets the WEP password input as plain (ASCII) text by default. EVERYBODY ELSE defaults to the input being seen as hexidecimal. Especially if you're using Windows' Zero Configuration system to manage the wireless connection on the Windows box, you will generally run into problems unless you take steps ahead of time.

Read this Apple Knowledge Base article for a great explanation of how to make sure you get the same key entered in both your Apple Wi-Fi equipment AND your Windows equipment.

[reemas]

thanks for the prompt reply. i read that link and several other pages it linked to. but i'm a little confused. i tried their example. setting my password to "apple" on my computer and then on my windows laptop using this password: "6170706C65" (a=61, p=70, p=70, l=6C, e= 65). i even put a "$" before that password, but still no luck.

i'm sure i'm doing something wrong. but i'm trying to figure it out. any pointers are much appreciated!

[ghporter]

Originally posted by reemas:
thanks for the prompt reply. i read that link and several other pages it linked to. but i'm a little confused. i tried their example. setting my password to "apple" on my computer and then on my windows laptop using this password: "6170706C65" (a=61, p=70, p=70, l=6C, e= 65). i even put a "$" before that password, but still no luck.

i'm sure i'm doing something wrong. but i'm trying to figure it out. any pointers are much appreciated!

Windows doesn't use the "$" thing, so don't worry about that-it assumes the input will be hex. One thing to consider is whether or not there's some other utility trying to control the wireless card in the laptop. This is pretty easy to run into, since many card manufacturers don't bother to tell you all the details of getting their stuff to work in Windows. I have found that it's best to remove those utilities unless Windows can't manage the card properly.

After getting the key to match perfectly, you need to make sure that the Windows computer knows what kind of network to connect to, and how to authenticate on it. Since your computers will all have the shared key, your authentication should be set to "shared key" in the PowerBook's wireless setup. I think this will be in the Admin Utility, but since I have never messed with this stuff, I can't help you much here.