NetworkManager: A User's Review

[Aaron Konstam]

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 18:00 -0600, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 06:01:00PM -0500, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > I asked about wireless support in this list a couple of days ago and
> > people pointed me at NetworkManager.  It was not running on my system,
> > perhaps because my system was installed with FC3 and then upgraded to
> > FC4 and FC5, so new services were not activated as they would be in a
> > fresh install.
> > 
> > My experience is mixed.
> > 
> > For the wired and non-encrypted wireless, it seems to be fine.
> > HOwever, for the networks that require a WEP key, I can't log in with
> > it. When I try with NM, it asks me for a WEP passphrase and it asks if
> > I am in an "open network" or "shared network".   I don't know what
> > those mean, but I've tried all combinations and it does not log in.
> > 
> > On the other hand, with the key saved in
> > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, the home network does come up, either
> > from the command line:
> > 
> > /sbin/ifup home
> > 
> > or inside system-config-network.
> > 
> > Can NetworkManager be made to read the WEP key as it is already set by
> > system-config-network?
> 
> This sounds suspiciouly like my experience until now. What I just
> discovered is that NM does not like or play with 64 bit WEP keys. You
> must use 128 bit WEP keys. You might check your AP for the size of the
> keys.
> 
Well I wanted to use a 128 bit key but the wireless router from 2WIRE
supplied by sbc (or at&t) has a 10 character key built in. So the first
task is to change the key to a 13 character key. But I guess sbc only
wants to deal with Windows that will aloow 10 character keys. Very
frustrating.
-- 
Aaron Konstam <akonstam at sbcglobal.net>