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mhl
10-07-2009, 09:31 PM
I have a new Airport Extreme Dual-band 802.11n base station, and various WIFI devices. I am connecting to it from a Thinkpad W500 laptop that has an Intel 5100 AGN WIFI card and Windows XP Service Pack 3. The card is capable of 'n' mode at 300Mbps

I can connect in 802.11b and 'g' modes when using WEP or WPA-PSK. I can connect in 'n' mode at 300Mbps when I turn off security. My problem is that I can't connect in 'n' mode when I try to use WPA-PSK. My laptop either won't connect at all or will only connect in 'g' mode at 54Mbps.

Some more details:
1) I have configured the Airport Extreme to turn on both its 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz networks and use a different SSID for each. This permits me to try to connect directly to the 5.0Ghz. network.
2) I can see both networks from my laptop -- meaning that my laptop reports two base stations, each with one of the SSIDs.
3) I am aware that an 'n' network slows down to 'g' mode if there are any 'g' devices. But (a) I have this problem even when there are no other WIFI devices connecting to the base station; and (b) the whole point of a dual network setup is to get the 'n' mode on the 5.0Ghz network; and (c) I can connect in 'n' mode when I turn off security.
4) For the WPA-PSK, I have selected AES mode on both ends and entered the same key.

I have spent several hours on the phone with Apple support on this and another problem with no solution. So at this point, I'm quite frustrated.

mhl
10-08-2009, 06:51 AM
Thanks to an article that I found elsewhere on Wi-FiPlanet, I installed Microsoft's KB893357 update to Windows. This fix adds WPA2 support to Windows, and it is what I needed to get my laptop to connect in 'n' mode with WPA2.

I believe that the Airport Extreme only supports WPA2 (not WEP or WPA) when operating in 'n' mode -- possibly a requirement of the standards. So Windows and 'n' mode are mutually exclusive without that update.

My next problem is that the "ThinkVantage Access Connections" software that is supplied with the laptop doesn't seem to work with WPA2. I'm now able to connect using WPA2 when using the base Windows support, but not when using "Access Connections". Sigh....