Help needed with AirPort and 2Wireb

[vinayak_02169]

I recently purchased an iBook G4 laptop, with OSX Tiger 10.4
I am having trouble connecting to my 2Wire wireless router. The router
is WEP encryption enabled.
I have two other IBM laptops (running windows) that have no trouble connecting to the router.
The AirPort assistant tab seems to find the network alright, but cannot connect to it when I supply it the password (the default 10 digit number from the bottom of the router.) It says "password incorrect".
Also, in the 802.1X tab, what should be the user name? I am assuming the password to be the above 10 digit number.
I have checked and rechecked all the router settings on the router's web page, to no avail.
Any help would be greatly appreciated; I am at the point of sending the machine back...
Thanks
-Vinayak

[boardwalk2]

Is your router set up for WEP or WPA (which is the security for the network)? If you are not sure, check 'Properties' for your network card on the Windows lapotop. If you set up the router and have admin access to it, you should be able to see in the Wireless settings if it is set for WEP. Either case, since you mention 10 password (not sure what you mean by from the bottom of the router), it is not really the WEP security (which will be 13 characters ASCII for 128bit, or a lot of hex digits in the range 0-F if it HEX). Assuming you can pick the network from Airport icon on top right, try 'None' for wireless security.

[eric2006]

I'm not sure if this will help, but I know that my Linksys stuff only needs a Passphrase to generate a key, but OS X cannot generate the key from the passphrase. If this 10-digit number is a passphrase, then that could be your problem..

[vinayak_02169]

The router is setup for the WEP 64 bit encryption key. Since I am using default settings on the router, the key is printed at the bottom of the physical router.
From what I understand, WEP security can be setup for either 40 or 104 bits; 24 bits are added automatically at random to make it 64 or 128 bit encryption. In my case, it is the 40 (or 64 bit) encryption.
Just as a sidenote, I happened to read on some website that prefixing a '$' to the
encryption key works in some cases. Well, it did in my case...I don't know how or why, but the connection works! I just wish someone could shed some more light on this...
Thanks for taking the time,
-V

[powermac]

The leading $ indicates what comes after it will be treated as hexadecimal numbers.

Here is Apple's page for further information. This follows along what eric2006 was saying.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106424