[MacNZ]

Ok, here's where I show my lack of network expertise-- hoping someone could help me with a basic problem. I have an Airport extreme base station plugged into a 100BaseT network and ADSL connection. Two old iMacs are connected to the network through Ethernet and two Pismos are connected wirelessly. The printer I use is also connected wirelessly; is a HP PSC2510 wireless- all-in-one printer.

I have all the macs on the network set to using DHCP but every time I apply a WEP password to the Airport network the printer goes offline. I now have airport working without a password but don't feel comfortable keeping it that way.

The other problem is that even though all the macs are connected using DHCP, when several of the macs are running at once at least one of them ends up being assigned a weird IP address and the network has to be reset. The normal IP my Pismo receives is 10.0.0.12 but it will sometimes get given a random IP like 169.254... and so on. I can't connect to the internet or anything when this happens.

I know I am probably doing something stupid but would really appreciate some help! Cheers,

Pete C.

[ghporter]

The printer, being wirelessly networked, needs to be using exactly the same security that the rest of the wireless network uses. If you're setting that up, then there's a problem with HOW you're setting it up. This is not that uncommon, since AirPort products will intrepret passwords as plain text by default, while just about everybody else interprets them as hex by default.

My suggestion is to generate a hex password, then enter it on ALL of your wireless devices, including the printer. When you enter it on the Pismos and the AirPort base, make sure you tell the Admin Utility that the password is hex; depending on your version, there may be a checkbox to indicate that, or lacking that, just start the entry with '$' (without the quotes). The dollar sign makes the utility interpret the entry as hex.