Aironet 1200 WEP question

[calebmmears]

Hey everyone,

We have a dozen or so Aironet 1200 series Access Points and I am trying to find a way to have the APs send the WEP key to the clients so we don't have to manually visit each client and put in the WEP key. We have a lot of visitors that need wireless access so there is no authentication but we would like to encrypt the traffic that is going over the wireless network. I understand that static WEP can be broken easily but I figured it would be a good place to start. I read through the documentation and saw that in order to support broadcasting rotating WEP keys we will need a RADIUS server but that is not an option at this point. If anyone can tell me or point me torward a resource that shows how to setup an Aironet 1200 AP to send out it's WEP key I would appreciate it. If there is no way to set that up any alternatives to having a RADIUS server would be appreciated. MAC filtering and MIC won't work because we cater to too many vistors to manage that effectively. Thanks.

Caleb

[rsahney]

Well the situation is good enough without a solution...: - )

1 Dynamic key is available through radius ( but that is not an option)

2 MAC filtering is not possible coz you would not know the MAC address.

3 MIC and CKIP (formerly TKIP) is ciso propritery hence will work with cisco cards . ( IF you are sure that that all clients will have cisco cards then you can choose this ... but practically this is not possible)

Moreover with Cisco AP you will need to disable aironet extension in order to run some non cisco cards.

Hence the conclusion is you use 128 bit WEP keys.... only ... Cheers...

[calebmmears]

I can live with 128 bit WEP keys but I need to find a way to easily get the keys to the clients. We could put up the Key throughout the building but that's not efficient and I'm looking for a way to have the Access Point automatically deliver the WEP key to the client when a client is recognized as trying to connect to the network instead of the client having to manually type in the WEP key and then connect. This may not be possible but I'm sure hoping somebody has come up with a way for this to work. Thanks.

Caleb