WEP help

[Jacques Caron]

At 22:24 05/12/2002, Doug Yeager wrote:
> > Obviously, you still need a way to allow users with 802.1x or a
> > subscription to connect (without WEP) to a limited set of pages to
>know
> > what they need, subscribe, download the necessary software, etc.
>
>any thoughts on how to do this?
>
>I guess my question is... if you set up hostapd to do encryption, is it
>optional to the client?  Can they use the network at all w/o wep so they
>can hit a website and signup?

The problem is really in the beacon frames and how the clients interpret 
it. For instance, XP will not associate with an access point that doesn't 
have the privacy bit turned on in beacons if it is configured for 
encryption (even with 802.1x). On the other hand, most clients won't 
associate to an access point advertising WEP encryption if they don't have 
it on.

So I guess one would need a way to broadcast two different beacons 
(probably with different SSIDs), one with and the other without the privacy 
bit set to one.

>Anyone done this?

Not yet :-( Let me know if you get to anything interesting.

Jacques.


-- Jacques Caron, IP Sector Technologies
    Join the discussion on public WLAN open global roaming:
    http://lists.ipsector.com/listinfo/openroaming