Computer network smarties

[Jerk]

I have 3 computers in my home on a wireless network.

I set up the security on WEP and it gave me 4 different "keys" which are 10 digits long.

Why 4? I tried the first one on my bedroom computer. Then I put the 2nd one on another computer. It worked. Then I put the 3rd one on the lap-top. It did not work. I went back and put the first key in the lap-top. It worked. Now at this point, I should say "It's all working, who cares." But I can't help but wonder: Why are there 4 keys, and why do some work and some don't?

[BajaOklahoma]

Because the directions say-so, but they only use the first one.

My son came over and set up the network for my new laptop since he secured the last one. He did something different with the MAC addresses and we don't need the key.

Don't ever lose the key.

[soonerboomer93]

when you set it up, you choose which of the 4 it will use because there's 4 possible keys for everypass phrase

or some **** like that

[soonerboomer93]

Because the directions say-so, but they only use the first one.

My son came over and set up the network for my new laptop since he secured the last one. He did something different with the MAC addresses and we don't need the key.

Don't ever lose the key.

he limited to only connect to certain mac addresses

[Vaevictis]

I've never been able to find a real technical reason for having four keys. The "best" reason I've ever seen is that it allows efficient changing of keys -- just tell your users to switch to key #2 sometime in the future -- but that's a pretty weak reason.

FWIW, don't use WEP if you have the option to use WPA or WPA2. WEP is easily cracked by readily available tools. WEP is better than nothing mind you, but only just barely. It will only keep polite people from listening to your traffic and/or using your AP.

Also, Baja, assuming you care about security, if what your son did was limit to certain MAC addresses, ask him to switch over to a WPA or WPA2 encryption scheme if it's possible -- limiting to certain MAC addresses is pretty worthless for security purposes. Anyone can listen to the traffic and configure their wireless card to use one of the allowed MAC addresses.

[Partial Qualifier]

I think there's 4 wep key slots for one main reason: some AP's optionally do a "key rotation" where it randomly picks which of the 4 keys to use as the transmit key for any individual connection. That functionality was built-in to wep from the beginning (wep was part of the original 802.11 standard) Key-rotation = Worthless nowadays, considering wep is silly to begin with (as documented above).

Typically you wouldn't need to specify all 4 keys on your client devices, unless of course you're doing a key rotation on the AP or want to do a manual "change transmit key" every so often. As long as it's in the same slot as the corresponding key's slot on the AP, you only need 1 for it to work (don't put AP's key #3 in client's slot #1, etc)

You could sit there & manually switch the transmit keys on the AP's and/or clients; then, it would the 14yo next door 30 minutes to hash your keys instead of 1 minute ;) but I'd definitely do wep if that was my only choice.

And Vaevictis is correct in urging you to go with WPA if your AP supports it; it's your best bet right now if you're worried about securiteh.

[BlondeSoonerGirl]

You just got nerd all over my eyes.

[Fugue]

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/26.gif

[Partial Qualifier]

is that what kids call it these days?

[Beef]

You just got nerd all over my eyes.
:eek:

[Jerk]

Yeah, I can go to WPA - if I can understand it.


Thanks guys