A colleague just discovered the secret of entering a 10-character WEP encryption key into an Apple AirPort Card: precede the hexadecimal key by a dollar sign. If the key is in text - some systems allow you to enter five ASCII characters - enclose the text within double quotation marks: "
This seemingly trivial piece of information is required to put an Apple on a network that uses standard 802.11b protocols. Apple's own system uses a encryption messaging algorithm that takes arbitrary text and produces an almost unique 10-character (40-bit) encryption key.
The converse solution is well known: in the Apple AirPort Admin Utility, selected Network Equivalent Password from the Edit menu, and the software displays the hexadecimal key needed by other manufacturers' software.
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