wireless connection with Netgear MR814

[ratgirlny]

I am trying to get my new TJ-37 to connect to a wireless router, a Netgear MR814. We use this router with our laptop, which has a Netgear wireless card in it. We have 128 bit WEB encryption set up. Now, when the encryption was set up on the router, 4 keys were generated using different passphrases. Evidently, this router cycles through the keys. The Netgear wireless card in the laptop has a place to specify all 4 keys. Each key is 26 hex figures. Everything works great.

But when I went to set up wireless access on my TJ37, I found only room to enter one key. ANd of course it does not work with just one key. Wireless access works great when we turn off WEP encryption at the router, but we don't want to run our network that way. I talked to Sony support, and his only suggestion was to run it without WEP.

So my question is, why is there this huge difference in number of keys between the router and the TJ37? Do we have our router set up stupidly? Or is there some trick to get 4 keys into the TJ37? Or should we just give up on encryption altogether (though that is why wireless has such a bad security reputation).

Any insights would be really appreciated.

thanks,
Bonnie MacKellar

[TJ37]

Simple, your Netgear MR814 supports 4 keys and so does your WiFi card for your laptop. The TJ however, does not support this feature. Your router isn't set up stupidly, the TJ37 simply does not support this feature offered by your router (with what I know at the moment). The only way right now, is to use just one WEP key instead of cycling 4 different keys.

[ratgirlny]

Does that mean I need to set up the Netgear router somehow to use just one key? Just entering one key on the TJ37 doesn't work, because the router uses all 4.

thanks,
Bonnie MacKellar

[Xorand]

I've only got one key set up on my router (the other three are set to all zeroes). My TJ37 works fine with the one key set on the router and the handheld. Should be pretty secure, with 128 bit WEP. That's quite a few bazillion combinations for someone to try to break.

[Insider]

WEP can be cracked in no time (a few hours at worst), make sure you set up the wireless router to accept specific MAC addresses only (your laptop WIFI card and TJ37) so it would make it slightly more difficult for someone to steal your bandwidth...