Microsoft wireless and WEP keys

I have a Toshiba Portege 3500 tablet pcs with integrated wireless 802.11b. I plan to deploy 36 Cisco 1200 802.11b WAPs company wide. I want to use (4) 128 bit WEP keys. Things are working no problem when I connect a Cisco card with 4 keys to the WAP with the same 4 keys. The Toshiba integrated uses the Microsoft wireless implementation instead of having it's own driver and utilities for configuring WEP keys. When I add one WEP key to the Toshiba to a WAP with the same key everything works fine. I am having trouble when I try to jump to 4 WEP keys.

Does the Microsoft implementation of wireless and WEP support 4 keys? I've tried using the Key index to advance to the next key. Anyone have docs or suggestions on how to set up 4 WEP keys in MS wireless?

Thanks,
Mike

After extensive searches on your problem I have come to my own conclusion... dump the MS wireless adaptor and stick with Cisco equipment for your network. Cisco likes to be married to Cisco. I have found many articles concerning how BAD the MS 802.11b wireless products are.

Just my 2 cents. I hope you can find someone here who can help you on this. I have used the Cisco equipment in the past and found it to work very well. I did not find any reference two your question on the WEP keys.

Do you have the latest patches for Windows XP and the latest drivers for the wireless card? You may want to also check out these articles from Microsoft. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=815485 and http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...n/wifisoho.asp

colbertm ... I just finished reading the links that ih8tspam supplied and it looks to me like the MS client end only supports 1 key. Although you have probably figured this out by now. :rolleyes:

What wireless chipset does the Portege use? Centrino? If so, it can be configured through the Intel Proset Software.

Thanks for the help and pointing me to the Technet article. I agree, I'm not impresses with MS wireless. I solved the problem. I applied the XP wireless update KB826942, dumped the Toshiba drivers an utils, downloaded new drivers and client utils directly from Agere, disabled Zero Configuration and I was "In like Flynn".

Thanks for your replies,
Mike

WELCOME to AO


Thats why we are here, I am glad to hear you got it solved. :killcompu