Original AirPort Card on an AirPort Extreme network?

[TheMacGuy]

Inside my Cube that I picked up yesterday, I saw an older AirPort Card and thought even if the Cube doesn't work I still get an AirPort Card for my eMac. Anyway, I went and took it out of the Cube and put it in the eMac, but when I try to connect to my network, it gives the error of either "There was an error joining the selected AirPort Network." (using the AirPort logo in the menu bar) or "The password you entered is not correct for the selected AirPort Network." (inside Internet Connect). Is there a way to get it on my current network, or do I need to buy an original AirPort Base-Station? My current network set up: 3 5th Gen AirPort Extremes, WPA2 Personal Password Protected. I also tried making a guest network, and when I don't put a password on it, it runs fine. But when I put a password on it, either being WPA/WPA2 or just WPA2, it gives off the error.

 

[Cory5412]

The original AirPort card can not do WPA or WPA2 networking, especially in Mac OS 9.

Your best best is to either run a passwordless network, or a network with WEP, or (even better) use a more modern device as a bridge -- there are bridges designed for gaming consoles which you can set up to use WPA2 security, or you can set up an old router as a bridge.

The advantage to this is that you can join non-wireless Macs and other devices to your home network, and if you get one of these devices designed for operation on a G network, you will not experience performance degradation, which can sometimes happen when joining wifi devices using an older standard to a newer type of network.

 

[wardsenatorfe92]

I actually believe the original AirPort card can recognize WPA networks and connect to them if you are using OS 10.3 or 10.4. I've seen it done before with older G3 iBook's.

 

[LCGuy]

Yep - I have a TiBook running Leopard, with an original AirPort card, it has no trouble connecting to my WPA network. WPA2 of course, is out of the question.

 

[Gorgonops]

Rehashing again, yes, the original Airport card can do WPA. (The important difference between WPA and WPA2 is that WPA uses "TKIP", which leverages the same encryption hardware as WEP but rotates keys with every packet, thereby providing a workaround for the fact that WEP itself is easily breakable once you've collected enough packets. With the right software any card that can do WEP should be able to do WPA; I had an ancient Wavelan Silver card set up on a Debian box to be able to connect to WPA networks, although to be fair doing so requires softloading a custom firmware. WPA2 requires AES encryption capabilities which pretty much all 802.11b and some 802.11g cards lack.) There should be a checkbox somewhere on the Airport Extreme's UI to have it allow WPA in addition to WPA2 and it *should* work, although I will grant I haven't tried a WPA-only client on my Airport Extreme since the last successful firmware upgrade.

(I mention "firmware upgrade" because I did actually have some issues a couple versions back with an upgrade mysteriously breaking every non-Mac client in the house, which apparently only happened to me. If you end up really stumped I might suggest blowing away the config on your Airport entirely and re-setting it up from scratch, which is what I ended up doing to fix it.)

Allowing WPA does in theory open up a couple edge-case DOS attacks that don't work on WPA2, but I seriously doubt anyone would waste their time on them in a residential setting.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Well, I don't want to put my network in danger by having some one driving by, looking for open Wi-Fi to download illegal software off the Internet and I get thrown in jail. The eMac is only running 10.2.8 and I seriously dought the Cube has been upgraded past OS 9.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I have two networks:

One for only my approved devices, 5 GHz 802.11n/a only, WPA-2 encryption, MAC-limited, DHCP provided not by the router, but by a server that does MAC-and-hostname verification before assigning, and assigns non-approved devices IP addresses that are blocked from doing anything.

One for 'guest' devices, 2.4 GHz 802.11b only, limited to 2 Mbps (at the WiFi level,) no password, with complete separation from my 'internal' WiFi-and-Ethernet network, with filtering turned on (no torrenting, 'child filters' enabled for web, most ports blocked.) This is used for both guest use, and for older devices that can't do WPA (like the kids' Nintendo DS.)

 

[TheMacGuy]

How do you do that in ML? I tried playing around in the new AirPort Utility (6.1) and it lost A LOT of functionality from 5.3. Very disapointed.

 

[uniserver]

is there a way you can do that soft loading of custom firmware to a Wavelan SILVER card in os9 or osx, i have 3 or 4 wavelan silver cards, and wep 64 doesn't even work, they only works when i completely disable encryption.

 

[Gorgonops]

Well, I don't want to put my network in danger by having some one driving by, looking for open Wi-Fi to download illegal software off the Internet and I get thrown in jail. The eMac is only running 10.2.8 and I seriously dought the Cube has been upgraded past OS 9.

Oh, well, 10.2.8 is your problem. I'm pretty sure WPA support didn't turn up in OS X until 10.3.(something?). Upgrade the eMac and you should be fine under OS X. You're still SOL under 9 unless you use a standalone wireless bridge or something.

(I wouldn't worry about someone "driving by" and hacking into a TKIP WPA network. The attacks against it are *obscure*, require deliberate hacking, and mostly amount to DoS attacks or *very limited* spying on data sent to an active client. Unless they guess your password they can't join the network. WEP of course is practically useless.)

is there a way you can do that soft loading of custom firmware to a Wavelan SILVER card in os9 or osx, i have 3 or 4 wavelan silver cards, and wep 64 doesn't even work, they only works when i completely disable encryption.

The "soft firmware" trick is something built into the "oronoco" linux driver:

http://wiki.debian.org/orinoco

I don't know of it being implemented on any other OS, unfortunately. If you hunt hard enough you *should* be able to find the flash files to convert a Silver to a Gold, but I seem to vaguely recall there being some compatibility issues with the OS 9 drivers depending on what specific firmware build you upgrade to. :^/

 

[TheMacGuy]

If I upgrade to 10.3, I can use a more modern internet browser, correct? I want to be able to use it as it as a back up machine in case something happens to main MBP, so I don't have to use the old Dell I have buried in my closet. And will I still be able to use the OS 9 partition? I want to be able to connect my older Macs to the eMac via a Farallon iPrint adapter, and if I still have OS 9, I should be able to use it. Now just need to find a 10.3 disc.

 

[Gorgonops]

If at all possible I would recommend *not* bothering with 10.3. There's no reason not to go to 10.4 as it still runs "Classic" applications (last version that can) and has... some software still available for it, at least. 10.3's about as dead a dog as 10.2.