So I took the plunge and purchased an Airport Extreme Base Station (N), which I want to use as a NAS on my existing home network.

I have an Open Networks 625W wireless ADSL2+ modem router which supplies my internet connection, an iMac PPC 2GHz, 10.4.8, an Airport Express connected to an eyehome streaming to the telly. I want the AP Extreme to just join the network, the same way as the Airport Express, but I cannot for the life of me make it do that. I have tried all the options (I can think of!). I have loaded the software that came with the Airport, but it seems rather flakey....

It sets up ok as a standalone network with the drive easily accessible, however I cannot make it accept my password (a WEP 40 bit - yeah I know, not very high grade, however I am yet to work out how to actually implement WPA through the modem/router). It keeps asking for a 13 letter password (what the?), not my 10 character hex password (I hate the fact that I can't use a normal word with PC peripheral crap).

I have no idea what to do next....

Suggestions?

Thanks,

birdseed

Hi birdseed, I had the same problem with my network - although in my case I had certain network devices that could only accept WEP (I was using 128 bit but the problem is the same) and could not work with WPA. I couldn't work out how to put in the password in hex format (I even tried using the old traditional methods like using 0x in front of the number) so I gave up and set everything to use an ASCII WEP password in all my devices. It was a pain because I had to reset the password/setting in all of my devices (which after having to set all of the clocks in the house as a result of daylight savings it just seemed like an added burden that I didn't want to go through) ... but everything seems to work OK now. I don't understand why the new extreme doesn't accept the hex WEP passwords - the old airport extreme and the airport express all work a charm with this format :-(

So, how did you get around a wireless modem that wanted WEP as either 64, 128 or 256 bit? It seems that it will only accept HEX. I will try again this afternoon when I get home.

Damn you Apple, why do you change these things and not allow them backward compatability?? Grr!

Hmm, you're right - I had a quick read of the instruction manual for your MODEM and it doesn't seem to support ASCII :-( Anyway, it appears that the HEX code is simply the ASCII codes representation of the characters in the ASCII password. If you are unfamiliar with ASCII codes then you can use the following generator to create the hex password out of the ASCII password (use the "Custom WEP/WPA key" part of the generator). For a 40 bit code you'll need 5 characters which will convert to 10 hex digits. Hope this helps.

I think it is a strange move for Apple to remove the HEX functionality (I'm hoping it is still there but is just not documented well?). I read the Airport Extreme documentation and they claim that the problem with WEP is that the ASCII password is treated differently across different devices (in the case where the full 5/13 character password is not entered some devices fill the remaining characters in an undefined manner) - and yet they left the WEP ASCII password in but removed the HEX one (which in my opinion is not so open to ambiguity and is more flexible because you can enter HEX bytes which convert to characters that can't be typed).

epaell,

Thanks for the heads up on the HEx/ASCII thing - I checked it out and it works quite well. My AP Extreme however still doesn't want to play. Should I put it into WDS mode or just join the local network? The base station keeps freezing up during it's update in Airport Utility. I am then forced to fully reset it. Grr!

The "base station freezing during update" problem in the Airport Utility usually happens when the AP Express/Extreme is setup up in a mode that is different to your current setup ie. different encryption, different password and/or different SSID, etc, etc. In such a situation the Airport Utility can't "see" the AP device. This is not really a bug but can get rather annoying when you're in the setup stage. I had the same situation when I was trying to configure 2 AP express's, an old AP extreme and a new AP extreme as a complete network - sometimes it was like a game of chess trying to decide which order to change things so that I could avoid resetting the settings on any of the devices.

Anyway, back to your problem ... it seems to me that the AP extreme is still not fully recognising the password. Perhaps the problem is that it doesn't like the 64 bit mode and it wants you to enter a 13 digit 128 bit mode password? If you want to stick with WEP this might be worth trying. You could also try WPA - just check that all of your devices support WPA e.g. I had an old windoze XP laptop that wouldn't accept WPA :-(

BTW, how are you connecting the AP extreme to the MODEM? Are you intending to use both the MODEM and the AP extreme as wireless APs? Another possibility, if the AP extreme is not too far from your MODEM, is to disable the wireless on the MODEM and connect the AP extreme via an ethernet cable to one of the ports of the MODEM - this way you can hopefully avoid some potential issues eg. passwords, channels, etc. If you want to extend your network you can also set up your AP express to do this using the WDS (Wireless Distribution System) which is compatible across all AP devices. I currently do this to improve coverage at the other end of the house (and outside too).