Netgear MA311 and WEP

[skroo]

So, here's the situation: I recently bought a Netgear MA311 PCI wireless card (note - PCI, not PCMCIA) and am attempting to get WEP working with it under the current release of linux-wlan-ng. I'm not particularly concerned with the nature of the traffic that passes between this device and the AP, but I am fed up with having to use MAC addresses as the sole method of access control - particularly if I have people over or am fooling around with other wireless NICs; it's getting real old having to add and remove each MAC address by hand.

Basically, everything works fine as long as WEP's turned off. Turn WEP on, and it'll never associate with the AP or pass traffic. WEP keys (40-bit, for now I just want to get it working) match, FWIW. The AP's a Linksys BEFW11S4.

I haven't turned up anything specific on google yet, so any input would be appreciated.

[astcell]

I got my mother in law the same unit. Had to locki the channel o the unit and on the laptop to makwe it happy. It's like it won't scan channels. Try locking down to a specific channel and try again.

[converge]

Not sure if this will help any, but here are the two most common problems in relation to WEP usage among diverse devices:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n100496.asp

Other discussion of connectivity issues.... appearantly the netgear is notorious for being touchy about shared key vs. open

http://www.socketforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=710

[blackwave]

here is a nifty link for most common issues that are run into regarding hex-ascii wep and mixing brands.
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/.../mixed_wep.htm

[skroo]

Dammit!

Thanks, folks, for all the help. Unfortunately, it's *still* refusing to route unless all WEP is switched off. Here's what I've tried so far:

- Using sharedkey or opensystem explicitly at both ends.
- Locking to one specific channel / scanning *only* for that channel.
- Scanning / not scanning for an AP.

And various combinations of the the above meaning that I'm back to an entirely-open AP. I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't an issue with support of this specific NIC under the current release of linux-wlan-ng.

[ExtremeEsprit]

Had a similar problem with a customers Linksys. To make it work I had to manually key in the hex key rather than use the pass phrase.
However, this was on a windoze system.