Airport 4.2 vs Sony PSP WEP

Question

I don't know if Apple scans this forum for user reports of incompatabilities, but I suppose they're more likely to see them here than in Sony's Playstation.com forums. In any event...WEP encryption in the new PSP 2.0 firmware is strangely incompatible with Airports updated with the firmware included in 4.2, though it works after a rollback to earlier versions of the Airport firmware. This is with the Japanese 2.0 PSP firmware...it's possible that Sony will have fixed the bug in the U.S. version of the firmware scheduled for release later this week. If they don't, however, Airport users with PSPs will definitely want to consider a rollback. This has been posted about in Sony's forums, but I haven't seen it mentioned here. If Sony doesn't fix it, I sure hope Apple will address this in the next Airport firmware...

Answer 1

I've got my PSP connected to my AEBS. Here are some hints:
1) On the PSP, use "Infrastructure Mode" is the "Network Settings" screen. (You've probably already done this.)
2) Continuing on the PSP, use the "Enter Manually" menu pick. (This may not be necessary, and it may be simpler to use an alternative; I'm just reporting on what's worked for me.) Enter the AEBN SSID (the network name).
3) For the PSP WLAN security setting, use WPA-PSK (TKIP). Obviously, this is not the far less desirable WEP setting, so you'll have to reconfigure your AEBS to use WPA Personal. Nobody uses WEP anymore unless they have some very old wireless hardware that can't be upgraded. Enter the WPA Key on the PSP.
4) Finish the network settings on the PSP. I used manual address assignment with no proxy; the PSP settings are pretty much the same as wireless notebook clients except for the manually chosen IP address. Things should work at this point.
Again, the big change is to use WPA Personal (same as WPA-PSK TKIP). Try it and see.