Difficulty getting an Airport Extreme onto a WDS network

Since I already have a WDS network main station (trendnet) that I thought it would be easy to use the existing WEP hex password like I did with my Airport Express (simply take the hex password and add a "$" before it.)

Unfortunately the new Airport Extreme only allows 13 characters in its WEP Transitional Security Network so I could not get all of the long string of hexadecimal characters in from my old password. I could not use the old WEP password either for some reason.

Finally I thought I would make the new Airport Extreme's WEP Transitional Security Network and then take that hexadecimal code and put this into the old Trendnet device. My problem was that I could not find the hexadecimal equivalent of the password I typed into the AirPort Utility software.

I finally found out how to retrieve this hexadecimal code from the Apple support site. After you have entered a password into the Airport Extreme you can get the hexadecimal version of it with the following steps.

1. log onto the Airport Extreme using the Airport Utility software


2. select the "Base Station" menu item from the top of the screen/ window


3. select the "Equivalent Network Password"


4. and voila, a little window will appear showing you your WPA Password/ ASCII WEP Key and it's hex equivalent.


5. take this hex code and enter it into the other side of your WDS connection.

Now my DSL modem offers the Internet through my Trendnet wireless bridge at 54mbps and my MacBook can log on to the Airport Extreme at 130mbps with 802.11n to access the Internet and the rest of my local wired network.

Note: I have to use WEP for the WDS since I cannot get the Trendnet device to authenticate with anything better.

Tags: Airport, wds