Wireless Problems

[Kevin Oberman]

> From: Chris <racerx at makeworld.com>
> Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 22:08:50 -0600
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> 
> On Wednesday 17 December 2003 10:04 am, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > > Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 23:25:22 +1100 (EST)
> > > From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Darryl=20Barlow?= <darrylb_au44 at yahoo.com.au>
> > > Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> > >
> > > Sorry to post about a problem with a desktop machine
> > > but I may have more luck here given the problem is a
> > > cardbus one.  I have installed FreeBSD on a Desktop
> > > Machine with a TI 1410 PCI Cardbus Bridge and an Avaya
> > > Silver Wireless Network Card.
> > >
> > > The card connects perfectly to a D-Link Access Point
> > > in Debian and even in Windows XP.  However, in FreeBSD
> > > there is "no carrier" no matter what I seem to try.
> > > Troubleshooting help would be much appreciated.
> > >
> > >  Device seems to come up with:
> > >
> > >  ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.4.8 netmask 255.255.255.0
> > >  ssid HOME wepmode ON
> > >  wepkey 1234567890
> >
> > Exactly how are you specifying the WEP key? Is it an ASCII string or a
> > hex value? If it's a hex value, it needs to be entered as 0xnnnnnnn. If
> > it's an ASCII string, it is entered as a quoted string, but there have
> > been many issues with interoperability of  ASCII strings and it is
> > better from both an operational and security perspective to use a random
> > hexadecimal numeric key. (I use /dev/random to generate my WEP keys.)
> 
> Could you please show me an example of a 128 bit wep?

I assume you mean an example of generating a 128 bit WEP key from
/dev/random. I also assume that you mean 104-bit WEP (which is often
called 128-bit), here is a quick perl hack:

#!/usr/local/perl
print "0x";
for (1..3) {
    $key = `head -c 4 /dev/random`;
    $val = unpack "L4", $key;
    printf "%x", $val;
}
$key = `head -c 1 /dev/random`;
$val = unpack "C", $key;
printf "%x\n", $val;
exit;

Then use ifconfig to load it into the interface:
ifconfig wi0 wepmode on wepkey KEY

e.g.
ifconfig wi0 wepmode on wepkey 0xa89c872889bd38d97183ec2212

Of course, you will need to put it into your AP and any other wireless
cards, as well.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634