How to setup WEP secured network on the Photon

WEP networks are a little special, as well as insecure! When specifying the password, the WEP hex key needs some additional details beyond just the basic hex key.

To setup WEP on the Photon requires you add some extra information to the WEP password that’s required by the WiFi module. The WEP key should be provided with this additional information:

  • the index of the WEP key (0-3) as configured in your router. (in your router administration pages it’s probably labelled 1-4, so just subtract 1)
  • the length of the key in bytes, 5 or 13 bytes for 40-bit and 104-bit keys respectively.
  • the key itself

For example, let’s say we have the key 123456789A at index 0, then this would be written as

  • 00 - this is the key index 0. Other possible values are 01, 02, 03.

  • 05 - this is the length of the 40-bit key (5 bytes - it’s the number of letters/numbers in the key divided by 2). Another possible value is 0D for 104-bit keys containing 26 characters.

  • 123456789A - the remainder is the actual key

Putting that together we get:

00 05 123456789A

or written without spaces (as it should be)

0005123456789A
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i wouldnt use wep under any circumstance, it takes a hacker 12 seconds MAX to crack it.

I know. But there are still some folks who choose to use WEP, possibly for hysterical reasons.

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A bit off-topic perhaps but I remember asking if the photon supported PEAP protocol when it was announced and I didn’t get any definitive answer back then. Does it or is this not possible (so eduroam login basically)?

I want to share a solution for connecting to Wi - Fi Photon with WEP , because I had the same problem and after 2 days of late nights and having read many issues in the community finally managed to connect .

I suggest you do what @mdma says, excepting one thing. When they have their full key example

00 0D 130AFE69B94B6

change the last part 130AFE69B94B6 by the equivalent of 26 HEX digits , ie would have:

000D31333041464536394239344236

We’ve seen a non-negligible number of clients still on WEP. Are there any plans to support this in the future? We always recommend they upgrade their security, however sometimes they just don’t want to (because they have so many devices already configured with those credentials).

We’re just not big enough at this stage to “force them” to change just for us (especially when all their other IoT products connect without a hitch), so we either end up on the phone with them talking them through the WEP setup procedure, or we lose a sale…

My guide for configuring WEP on a Photon is here:

http://rickkas7.github.io/wep/

It’s still a bad idea, but it’s often possible to get it working with these completely non-intuitive tricks.

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Thanks @rickkas7, very clear presentation, but it’s not an issue of us not knowing how to make it work… the problem is that this kind of configuration puts too much on the client. Most people we deal with don’t even know how to change their router’s password.

I really think this should be handled by the system firmware. Every major IoT product we’ve tested seems to negotiate this no problem, and without asking anything more of the user setting it up.