HD200 with wireless adaptor issues - RESOLVED

[carlgar]

I am using the "heavily tested" ENUWI-N wireless adaptor. I am attempting to connect to my netgear WG602 V3 54 Mbps Wireless Access Point which is locked to G mode. First question is should this work?

The Hd200 shows my wireless network and allows me to select it. The problem starts when I go into the WiFi config to enter the WEP Key. The HD200 asks for a password, which I believe to mean the key. Does anyone know what is really wanted here? Anyway, after providing the WEP Key, I always get a timeout out error message.

After giving up on the wireless mode, I tried to return to wired mode properly. It showed a message that it was reconfiguring for wired mode but never seemed to complete. After about 10 minutes I just pulled the plug and rebooted. It did come up properly in wired mode. Has switching back and forth between wired and wireless modes been tested?

I did test the wireless adaptor on my notebook computer and it worked properly there.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by carlgar

The Hd200 shows my wireless network and allows me to select it. The problem starts when I go into the WiFi config to enter the WEP Key. The HD200 asks for a password, which I believe to mean the key. Does anyone know what is really wanted here? Anyway, after providing the WEP Kep, I always get a timeout out error message.

I don't have the wireless adapter for the HD200, so I certainly haven't used it. But, there's one thing you should look into. If you're really using WEP (as opposed to WPA/WPA2), then you have to be careful about the difference between an alphanumeric password that wireless devices turn into a key, and a 64/128-bit hexadecimal key which is used directly. I've run into this issue several times over the years (mostly several years ago).

Ultimately, I'd recommend that you switch to WPA2 (or at least WPA), as its much stronger. For the encryption/WPA algorithm, I'd recommend AES-only or TKIP-AES. Since the keys are long, WPA/WPA2 (pretty much) always uses alphanumeric passwords which are turned into keys, rather than hexadecimal keys directly.

Obviously, if you have devices that don't support WPA/WPA2, then you can't make the switch. But, it's a good idea to change if you can.

If you still have problems, enable logging on your wireless router and see what sort of messages appear.

[carlgar]

I will consider changing the security but the reason it is at the current level is that it is all my wireless MVP supports. I would like to continue to use it, but at a different location. I hope to use the HD200 in wireless mode at its current location.

I do not see any logging options for the Access Point. I do not have a wireless router.

Thank You for your comments.

Added: When I setup my access point WEP it asked for a phase which I believe you referred to as alphanumeric password, which generated 4 hexadecimal keys. Only one is selected. It is this hexadecimal key that I enter into my wireless devices. I did try to enter the same phase as the Hd200 password but still got the timeout error message. The fact that the access point gave 4 possible keys, indicates that other values are used to generate the keys. I think that is the basic issue, The HD200 is not expecting the hexadecimal key or perhaps it must be in upper case. I am using the 64 bit encryption, again because of the wireless MVP.

[reggie14]

I can't find any documentation on configuring wireless support on the HD200. You might need to find out from Sage if you have to enter hexadecimal keys in a different way. For instance, maybe you have to prepend your hex key with "0x".

[carlgar]

This issue has been resolved with the latest beta fimware released today (8/14/09).