Enabling WEP network authentication and data encryption is similar to configuring a wireless client, because both the WAP and client require the same configuration parameters.
To use your network adapter as a wireless access point, you must first put the network adapter in host access point mode:
ifconfig abc0 mediaopt hostap
You will also likely need to adjust the media type (link speed) for your wireless adapter as the auto-selected default may not be suitable. You can view all the available media types with the ifconfig -m command. They will be listed in the supported combinations of media type and media options. For example, if the combination of:
media OFDM54 mode 11g mediaopt hostap
is listed, you could use the command:
ifconfig abc0 media OFDM54 mediaopt hostap
to set the wireless adapter to use 54 Mbit/s.
The next parameter to specify is the network name or SSID. This can be up to 32 characters long:
ifconfig abc0 ssid "my lan"
The final configuration parameter is the WEP key. The WEP key must be either 40 bits or 104 bits long. You can either enter 5 or 13 characters for the key, or a 10- to 26-digit hexadecimal value. For example:
ifconfig abc0 nwkey corpseckey456
You must also mark your network interface as up to activate it:
ifconfig abc0 up
You can also combine all of these commands:
ifconfig abc0 ssid "my lan" nwkey corpseckey456 mediaopt hostap up
Your network should now be marked as up:
ifconfig abc0 abc0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST, RUNNING, PROMISC, SIMPLEX, MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ssid "my lan" apbridge nwkey corpseckey456 powersave off bssid 11:22:33:44:55:66 chan 2 address: 11:22:33:44:55:66 media: IEEE802.11 autoselect hostap (autoselect mode 11b hostap) status: active