streaker69

I setup a WRT54G v3.1 for a neighbor of my parents a couple weeks ago. He needed better coverage in his house so I told him to go down to the local Radio Refridgerator Box and get a WAP54G and we'd set it up in Repeater mode to his router. I even wrote down WAP54G on a piece of paper so he wouldn't forget what to ask for.

He went down the other day and picked one up, and then asked me to come over and configure it for him. Going to his place I find he's purchased a WRE54G repeater. I tell him it's the wrong thing, but it should still work for what we're doing. I had told him the WAP instead of the extender because the AP's are around $50 and the extenders are around $100.

Apparently the braindonor at the store heard him say 'repeater' and just looked at the boxes and said 'yep, this one says repeater, must be the one you want.' The neighbor not knowing any better bought it.

Now comes time to set it up. I had him configured for WPA-AES, and everything was working just peachy keen. I dig out the WRE and hit the autoconfigure button and I get the typical Red Light, Blue Light then both Blue lights meaning it's connected properly to the AP. Oddly enough, I can't ping it, I can't connect to it, can't do anything with it.

I reset it to factory, connect to it and flash it to the latest firmware 1.04.17, and I flash his WRT to the latest of 4.20.7. No avail, it still won't connect properly. If I turn off WPA, the two connect just dandy. I switch the mode to TKIP, still no joy. I finally break down and decide to try out WEP. Set it to 128 and configure both, sure enough now they connect just fine.

It would seem there's something flawed in the implementation of WPA between the two devices. Just thought I'd let everyone know in case you run across these things yourself.

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renderman

And industry wonders why the sheeple don't use the highest level of security?

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CyberSp00k

And that problem stumped even an experienced professional. Every time I find myself in an analogous situation, my spouse asks "And what are we normal people supposed to do with those things?" When I die, she is simply going to haul all the computer and networking gear out to the curb, "free to all finders; birds, beasts, elves, and men, and all kindly creatures" because neither she nor my son want to have anything to do with learning how to configure or maintain the systems.

<generalization> Most induhviduals just want an appliance. All the talk about routers, repeaters, bridges, hubs, and switches is just so much ambient noise for them.</generalization>

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streaker69

What's even more sad is the number of sheeple that purchased the WRE54G and never bothered to hit the AutoConfigure button the side. So the thing is sitting there with default configuration not doing anything for them. If you see a SSID of LinksysR* then that's one not configured.

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Treat your gun like your genitals, only whip it out when it's absolutely necessary.