kevin kirwin's Library tagged os →  View Popular

Problems with WEP encryption

Setting up WEP encryption properly can be tricky, as the settings on the card and base station must match exactly. Here are some of the things that often go wrong:

Mismatched authentication methods -- WEP defines two authentication methods: "open system" and "shared secret." To establish a connection, the card and base station have to agree on which one to use. Normally, both are set to "auto" and everything works. But some base stations disable "open system" while certain cards (especially with older firmware) don't understand "shared secret." Thus, no communication. In these cases, the solution is to enable "open system" on the base station or update the card's firmware.

Mismatched keys -- WEP keys can be long and difficult to type in correctly. This is one reason we don't obscure the characters while you're typing in a new key. We also support all of the various key formats that different base station vendors use. Make sure you've selected the right type of key, and that the key value is typed in exactly as it is for the base station.

For AirPort passwords and ASCII keys, capitalization and spacing must match. For hex keys, all of the hex digits must be present. For all keys, the length of the key must also match. WEP keys come in two lengths: 40-bit and 104-bit, usually described on the packaging as 64-bit and 128-bit. And here's a handy guide to key lengths and corresponding encryption settings:

5 characters --> 64-bit ASCII password
10 characters --> 64-bit WEP key
13 characters --> 128-bit ASCII password
26 characters --> 128-bit WEP key

Multiple keys -- Most base stations are configured with a single encryption key, but some are set up to use multiple keys at the same time. If you are using one of these, you need to enter all four keys in the same order as they have been entered on the base station and select which key your card should use when it transmits network data.

Back to top

Do you support 40-bi

So the optimal Limit Capture setting in Final Cut Pro 6 for maximizing a DVD-R's space is 4575 MB. This setting in Final Cut Pro fills up the DVD.

BlueDisk Driver for Mac OS 10.4
$49.95

1577390


BlueDisk™ Driver for Mac OS 10.4 provides world's first Mac "Finder" interface to re-writable Blu-ray Disc Drives for "drag & drop" writing

BlueDisk™ Driver enables both Intel and PowerPC based Apple computer systems to format, read and write to re-writable Blu-ray discs using the standard Mac Finder interface, including "drag & drop" writing to disc. Discs are formatted in standard Apple HFS+ format for readability on an any driver equipped Apple system. The native Mac OS does not support Blu-ray disc drives or BD-RE media.

Compact, Reliable & Portable Data Storage
Now users can take advantage of the blu-ray disc drive's 25 GByte capacity re-writable media for data storage applications. Ideal for file backup, archival or large file data distribution, re-writable (BD-RE) blu-ray discs can now be used to store files written from any application supporting OS 10.4.9.

Sandisk (2GB) microSD/TransFlash Memory Card with SD Adaptor
Availability: In stock
Retail Price: $89.99
Our Price: $49.99

28 Jan 2006
9:17 AM

iChat AV: Making a Good Thing Less Good

One of the features that made Mac OS 10.4 appealing to me was iChat AV 3.x, which added the feature for multi-party audio and video chats. Up to 10 people in audio, and four in video. Also available for the first time was the option to encrypt you chat session.

At first, everything seemed to work as advertised. It continued to work as it had before with my parents, still on 10.3.9 and iChat AV 2.x. I think I managed to put together a three-person audio chat with Doug Miller and Al Hawkins at one point. I haven't been able to have a multi-party video chat because nobody who I chat with regularly had a G5 Mac that could host the multi-party chat. My brother and I were able to run an encrypted chat, but I honestly don't know if it was encrypted or not. We got the little padlock icon, but how do I know what kind of bits and packets are flying around out there? I guess it worked.

I read some reports of people having problems, and those were initially said to be related to support for some priority packet routing protocol Apple added to iChat AV. It's a relatively mature standard, but apparently not mature enough because not everything on the internet was properly configured to route those packets properly, so they were often dropped, and connections were lost or "not enough bandwidth" errors were reported. That seems to have been mostly resolved, but I never encountered that particular problem.

Then one of the incremental updates seemed to break encrypted chats. I could chat with my parents (who are on Panther, and therefore can't encrypt), but I couldn't chat with my brother anymore. We had to disable encryption to get reliable connections again.

I bought my eldest daughter an iSight for Christmas for their G5 iMac. I was at their house the other day, and I added my dad to their buddy list and he was online at the time, so we gave him a shout and we were able to video chat with no problems

Windows-based PCs have long partitioned disks using the Master Boot Record (MBR) disk partitioning scheme. MBR is popular because it has been around for a long time and is compatible with many operating systems. It is also very limiting, however, especially given the capacity of modern hard drives.

Newer operating systems such as Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 (64-bit), Windows Vista (both 32- and 64-bit editions), and Intel-based Mac OS X support the GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk partitioning scheme. GPT is a modern, flexible, and forward-looking disk partitioning schema. GPT Mounter was created to give Windows XP and Windows 2000 access to volumes on GPT-partitioned disks created using these newer versions of Windows.

GPT Mounter Limitations

Neither Windows XP nor Windows 2000 are capable of properly formatting volumes on GPT-partitioned disks. Though GPT Mounter does what it can to protect against damage if this is attempted, it should be avoided, and should not be expected to work. If you need to reformat a volume on a GPT-partitioned disk, you should use the operating system that created the disk.

GPT Mounter does not enable Windows to read foreign file systems. Though GPT Mounter will work with a disk GPT-partitioned using Mac OS X or Linux, you are only able to mount volumes created using a file system Windows understands, such as FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS. Windows doesn't natively understand Linux ext2, ext3 or ext4 volumes, nor does it natively understand Mac HFS or HFS+ volumes.

If you want to mount HFS and HFS+ volumes under Windows, you need MacDrive.

submit crash reports to developers manually;

submit crash reports to developers manually;

* Rotating clip allows for adjustment on your belt
* Latches securely to belt, but is easy to remove
* Stylish in design yet leaves all phone functions easily accessible.

3196WW