I was surprised when I tried to log into that WLAN and couldn't because the n810 wouldn't accept the 7 chars WPA key. All it did was complain that the key was smaller than 8 chars. Is there a trick to get it going anyway? After all it's not the WLAN client's business to decide on key policy but the access point operator's

Cheers Peter

if I remember correctly... the only valid lengths for WEP passwords are 40, 64 and 104 hexadecimal combinations. so the ASCII lengths allowable are 5, 8 or 13. (I'm a little fuzzy about the 40hex/5ascii part, but the others are correct)

could it be that the other wlan client you use is using the "pass-phrase" method to generate the hexidecimal setting from the 7 digit password?

I'm sorry, bad wording
s/key/passphrase/g
I was talking WPA passphrases

Cheers Peter

Nope. Using more than 8 chars without any trouble. Actually I use 16.

Yup, my WPA is 20+ characters long...and it's a really silly, but strong, password too...

I'm much more surprised that you were able to get another device to allow a 7 character passphrase.

I don't think the tablet is trying to impose anything, just assuming that you made a mistake typing the passphrase which is (of course) at least 8 characters.

-Jonathan

If I had been the one who configured that access point I'd have kicked myself for choosing such a short passphrase. What's more, I'd never have asked here as I could have changed both devices.