Automatic WEP key type/lenght recognition?

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 09:38 +0100, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> NetworkManager currently has these menues for entering WEP:
> "WEP 40/128-bit Key"
> "WEP 128 bit passphase"
> I'm leaving out others that are not commonly used in home environment (802.1x).
> 
> I saw lots of users having issues with "WEP 40/128-bit Key" being the
> default option and when using ASCII keys.
> I would suggest to use one simple but very effective mechanism for
> determining if key entered is 40/104-bit, HEX or ASCII.
> HEX keys have length of 10 characters for 40-bit, and 26 characters
> for 104-bit keys. ASCII keys have length of 5 or 13 characters.
> 
> Could this be incoroprated into NetworkManager so that the menu
> chooses appropriate type and length of key by the length of characters
> that users enters?
> 
> Here is RFE: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471859

Replied to the bug report...

The short answer is that NM already autodetects what the key type is for
Hex and ASCII keys, but for passphrases, it's simply impossible to
distinguish them from Hex/ASCII keys.  WEP simply sucks.  WPA fixed this
by mandating that the hex key (64-characters) did not intersect with the
passphrase (8 to 63 characters).

There's probably room to improve the NM applet UI and make it clear what
to enter where.

Dan