Long WPA password reconnect problem

Question

My iPod touch connects flawlessly to different known Wi-Fi networks when I move, but fails when coming back to a network where the password is particularly long (34 characters) : it asks for the passphrase as it had forgotten it.
Though, powering the iPod off and on again, it connects to Wi-Fi without asking for the (long) password, showing that it remembers it perfectly.
I suspect a bug related to password length in the reconnect function...
Did anybody observed this same behaviour ?

Answer 1

Mea culpa; that episode, by itself, is not a great reference. I was mostly mentioning Security Now! as a good introduction to cryptography - easily understandable by non-mathematicians.
Passwords MUST be over 8 characters for WPA/WPA2. Recommendations vary, since they're based on an individual's opinion and motives.
Calling this key a "password" can mislead users into thinking that "S3cur!ty" (for example) is a strong password. That string WILL appear in any rainbow table. If, for example, that's your password, and your SSID is "linksys", a script kiddie can be reading your traffic in less than an hour. If your password is 63 characters of randomly generated copied/pasted ASCII, it'll be good for much longer. I'd rather change my password once or twice a year than once an hour.
If you're using an iPhone or iPod Touch, and must actually type the password into the device, you might well want to use fewer characters.
I won't make a specific recommendation, since it's a personal decision, but I do think people should get good information if they want it. Sometimes, late at night, I'd rather let them listen to Steve Gibson than explain myself. Thanks for pointing out the need for clarification though, you're right, that episode is a little off topic.