Belkin Traveler & WPA-PSK

Clyde wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If you insist :) you can use radis. Go to radiuz.net for details. It works fine for me.

Called teir 3 on 9/11/2006 and spoke to a "tech guy". After a few minutes of him reading through the ticket and asking a few questions he tells me that this problem has been forwarded to R&D. He's not sure when/if they'll issue a fix.

I told him I think it would probably be in Belkin's best interest to issue one since this product is not doing what it is advertised as doing (if you advertise that a product can do WPA-PSK it probably should be able to).

There hasn't been a new hardware or firmware revision since this product hit the streets so apparently every F5D7233 Belkin Travel Router can't be configured for WPA-PSK. Guess nobody complained since probably people sharing internet connections in hotels don't care too much about security.

I want WPA-PSK because I intend to use this for business travel/team meetings so we can always be sure to have wifi available and WPA security would really be nice.

Belkin says that "maybe" there'll be an update available on their website by the end of October.

In my observation, this is fairly typical of Belkin's wireless networking division: inaccurate product specs and long delays in releasing needed firmware and drivers. Belkin's other products are generally excellent, but their wireless gear should be avoided, not because the hardware itself is that bad but because the organization behind it has a confirmed history of HUA syndrome.

I agree with your observation about their organisation. I have an F5D7330 wireless Ethernet bridge. The problem I had was that there was not a proper guide in the firmware update .zip file for the model. This update would enable WPA-PSK on the bridge, when the bridge is used as a "game adapter" - that is, connected to an Ethernet port.

I asked Belkin support about the missing guide and was told (later on) that the adapter (F5D7330) did not support WPA-PSK.

Well, in the mean time I had already run the firmware update with my fingers crossed and apparently the update was a success, because after the firmware update had been applied the adapter was able to connect to my access point that had been configured with WPA.

The Belkin support thanked me for this information and told me they would pass it on to Belkin.

I have other Belkin hardware as well, notably two of their F5D7010 PC cards that work out of the box with WPA on my Apple Powerbook. However, Belkin hsa not updated their Windows client to support WPA. Dispite what Belkin states on theit support site, their F5D7010 cards drivers only support WPA with Windows XP and WZC. If you look fare enough you can find other clients that do support WPA under earlier Windows versions. But there are no Belkin's software clients.

It should be noted, that the card works out of the box with Apple's OS X driver and client. No Belkin support for Apple's OS X.

So the notebook card (F5D7010) that Belkin doesn't specify as working with Mac OS X does actually work with it, but the PCI card (F5D7010) that Belkin lists as working with OS X doesn't. .

Some do, some do not. It's a question of which chipsets Belkin use. The ones with Broadcom chips work with Apple's driver/client because Aplle's Airport Extreme card use the same chip set.

The ones with Broadcom chipsets will have the Broadcom logo (a "54g" on redish-brown background inside a circle) on the box.

Belkin changed the chipset they used on their card along the way. The early models had Broadcom chips.

BTW. You can find quite a complete list of cards thát work with different drivers/clients on Macs by Googling with: "Mac OS Wireless Adapter Compatibility List". Remember to include the quotation marks. The latest list I have seen is from August 2005.

As of 11/5/2006 there's no firmware on the Belkin site for this problem.

Clyde wrote:

Well, one year later and there is still no fix. Just got the Belkin Travel Router F5D7233 and it came out of the box with FW 1.01.20 (12/10/07). Discovered this same problem right away - WPA-PSK doesn't take after being set. Started searching the net and found this forum (and others) talking about this very problem. So, I'm forced to using one of the WEP modes, which is okay - not a deal breaker. Still, looks like WPA is MIA on this product, and it is likely never to get fixed.

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dholsapple hath wroth:

That's what usually happens if you do nothing for a year.

Ummm, that's about 2 weeks ago, not a year ago. I take it you bought one a year ago that didn't work, and now you repeated the same mistake? (Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results).

What does "take" mean? Does it mean that it connects properly, but does not save the settings? Or does it mean that you cannot connect with WPA-PSK?

Is this TKIP or AES authentication? I've seen some combinations of client and router where only TKIP works.

What are you using to connect to or with? The travel router can act as an access point or client. Which mode are you trying to use? What model router? Have you tried other routers?

Any particular operating system?

References? I'm too lazy to duplicate your research.

Well, there you're probably correct. Belkin is not famous for updating or fixing their products. You might be lucky and get one or two releases before they give up and blunder back down the learning curve with their latest product.