One of the features/drawbacks of wireless is that other folks nearby can 
fairly easily "listen in" just by tuning to the right channel.  They might 
scan any traffic you send over the wireless that's not secured, and that 
could include passwords to things like email....

  The first version of building in encryption for wireless was called WEP, 
and it comes in two flavors:  64-bit and 128-bit.  But 24 bits of that are 
preset, leaving 40 or 104 bits that users can specify.  (That reserved 24 
bits is one of several reasons why WEP won't actually keep out anyone who 
really wants to bypass it.)

  So:  The laptop is trying to connect to a wireless network with WEP 
enabled.  If you enabled that on the router, you would have been asked to 
specify a key; since you apparently don't remember doing any such thing, 
perhaps your router is not the wireless that the laptop is trying to connect 
to.  (One of the other things you could set was the SSID, the "name" of the 
wireless network.  If you left that at the default, and so did a neighbor 
with the same brand, the laptop has to assume that they're both part of the 
same network.  Change it to something unique enough for you to be sure it's 
yours.)

David Gillett


On 9 Mar 2007 at 23:40, Alana Nichols wrote:

> Here's the issue:  I installed the wireless card and software in the
> laptop.  When you try to connect you reach a point where it says
> "requires use of a network key."  What exactly is a network key? 
> We've tried to enter the router password and get this error message: 
>
>     "The network password needs to be 40bits or 104bits depending on
> your network configuration.  This can be entered as 5 or 13 digit
> ascii characters or 10 to 26 hexadecimal characters." 
> 
>     Shouldn't the password be the same as the router password?  Can
> anyone clarify what goes here?  I have no experience with routers or
> networks.  Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
> 
> Alana Nichols

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