Linksys WAP54G bridge mode and WPA

- J
- Jeff Liebermann
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Jun 16, 2006 6:49 AM

Can a pair of WAP54G boxes, in bridge mode, do WPA encryption? WPA is certainly in the setup:

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Today, I replaced a pair of DWL-900+ wireless bridges with a pair of WAP54G v3.1 hardware, v3.04 firmware, bridges. The customer wanted more speed and interference immunity. In bridge mode, the two WAP54G radios worked just fine, but only with no encryption or with WEP. However, when I tried WPA-PSK, they would not talk to each other. I tried TKIP and AES, in both WPA and WPA2 without any luck. I left it WEP which is somewhat safe because in bridge mode, no client can connect. However, there's nothing to stop someone from capturing packets, decrypting the WEP key, and reassembling the messages.

The firmware release notes have a comment that WPA does not work in bridge or repeater mode to version 2.07. |

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was fixed in repeater mode in version 2.08. However, it appears that WPA and bridging are still mutually exclusive. Crap...

I tried to find anything related on the Linksys knowledgebase. Nothing. I'm not sufficiently desperate yet to call Linksys support.

Anyone got some clues or hints?

- W
- William P.N. Smith
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Jun 16, 2006 12:49 PM

Dunno about bridge mode specifically, but putting one in AP mode and the other in Client mode works fine with WPA in at least one instance I can call up off the top of my head.

- J
- John Navas
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Jun 16, 2006 2:16 PM

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:49:06 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

And other bad things, even hijacking the connection (e.g., by mounting a DoS attack on one end while spoofing it to the other end). WEP is next to worthless, keeping only honest people honest.

- J
- Jeff Liebermann
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Jun 16, 2006 4:59 PM

William P.N. Smith hath wroth:

I tried using AP mode and client modes. That works fine with WPA. It's only the bridge mode that doesn't do WPA.

I ran into a weird problem which doesn't make sense. In bridge mode, I could see all 20 odd machines and boxes on both sides of the bridge. In AP and client mode, I could only see about 6 machines. I didn't have time to debug this headache and wanted to get the system back up as fast as possible. I may need to ruin yet another weekend debugging this problem.