[NBLUG/talk] WiFi revisited

[Lincoln Peters]

On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 14:07, Augie Schwer wrote:
> > What would be the advantage, if any, to having a RADIUS server, rather
> > than a pre-shared key?  Would I be correct to assume that a pre-shared
> > key would be easier to set up?
> 
> I am afraid I don't know. I don't have any experience with RADIUS.

I set up my router to use WPA with a pre-shared key, and got my iBook
connected to it in under 2 minutes.  It's already easier than RADIUS (I
easily spent 10 minutes looking at packages, help pages, etc., and still
couldn't figure out what to do with it).

If I find reason to believe that RADIUS would be more secure, and I
would be able to implement it without a lot of extra work, I will
implement it then.

> 
> > I know that the router supports WPA.  The literature for my WiFi cards
> > talks about WEP but not WPA; would the card itself need to support WPA
> > or could I implement WPA on a software level?
> 
> I am not sure. I believe for the card, it would have to be built in.

The iBook G3 is running MacOS X 10.3.4 (the latest), and uses an AirPort
non-Extreme card (since only a G4 or better seems to support AirPort
Extreme).  The non-Extreme card was manufactured before any 802.11g
devices existed (and before WEP was found to be insecure), but I had no
difficulty connecting it to a WPA network.

Therefore, I suspect that WPA does not have to be built-in, but I can't
be sure.  It might be specific to the AirPort card that it was able to
work with a standard that hadn't been invented when it was released.  I
guess I'll find out when I try to set up the WiFi cards on my Debian
boxes.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.