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General discussion

Wireless Network Passwords

Feb 1, 2006 10:19AM PST

I recently purchased a Buffalo LinkTheater player and have been having problems getting it to connect into my wireless home network.

Up until now my network has used Shared Network Authentication with WEP encryption using a 128bit ASCII key. I've also put all the MAC addresses of my wireless devices (laptop, desktop, psp) in and configured the wireless modem/router to only allow access to those MAC addresses.

Obviously when i set it the LinkTheater its MAC address too, but it just didn't want to connect with WEP enabled. As a result i've disabled the WEP encryption for the time being so everything works as intended.

However, i'm a little worried as to whether my network is safe now. Is the allow recognised MAC addresses only filter enough, or have have i left my self wide open?

Discussion is locked

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you would be safer by using
Feb 2, 2006 1:18AM PST

MAC Address filtering only, than using WEP/WPA/WPA2 only...

of course it is would be better if you have both.

The problem you have, might be that the LinkTheater doesn't support WEP 128bits (try the lower one, 64?).

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MAC over WEP
Feb 2, 2006 2:23AM PST

Well sounds like the MAC over WEP move is better than nothing. As for the keys, i tried 64 & 128 bit, ascii and hex to no avail. So that's not the trick! Happy

Thanks for putting my mind at rest on the MAC side of things though...