Accessing a WEP-secured wireless network

[Austin]

On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 08:12 -0400, William O'Higgins wrote:
> I have been scouring the net unsuccessfully for a tutorial on accessing
> a WEP-secured wireless network.  I have seen a bunch of utilities for
> cracking them, but I am a legitimate user, and as such I have the essid
> and the key.  I just don't know how to connect.  I hate having to boot
> into Windoze for its networking abilities -- it's just wrong!

You sure you mean "WEP"?  WEP is the old style wireless encryption...
quite crackable.  To access it on linux, just use:
# iwconfig eth1 essid <my essid> enc <my password>

Note that with wep, the password is almost always 10 hex characters.

If you want to have your system "remember" this access point, things get
trickier.  There are several backends to do this (waproamd, wlandetect),
and a few frontends (drakroam, tkwifi, etc.).

Now if what you're really talking about is WPA, that's a whole different
ballgame.  WPA is a newer form of wireless security, mainly to do with
authentication, not necessarily encryption.  There are utilities like
xsupplicant to access WPA enabled access points, but it's not something
I'm familiar with, and from what I've seen, a LOT more complicated than
WEP.

> Under Windoze I have configured a profile for the network, and once the
> wireless card has established a handshake I have to go to a web page
> (I'm automatically redirected) where I enter a personal password.  This
> is bound to be familiar to someone - can I get a pointer or two?

You're now speaking of authentication, not encryption.  I have to do the
same at school.  It works flawlessly with linux.  In fact, it's all
web-based, so it shouldn't matter if you use windows or linux at all.
Just iwconfig to the network essid, run dhclient, and open your web
browser.

Austin

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