I use the Nokia e61i as my mobile. Instead of my telco’s data plan (which offers me a meagre 1GB per month) I simply prefer to use my home wireless LAN when I am at home. Until recently I used the wireless “access point” without any secure settings, but have had to move to WEP now due to cheeky neighbors.
Problem: Nokia’s WLAN option kept prompting me for the WEP key *everytime* I would connect to my email or any website.
After googling for a good many days and bumbling around on Nokia’s forums, I have finally figured out how to make Nokia remember the cotton-picking password. Simple answer: you need to lose your cached WLAN entry, which may be stored as a non-WEP access point.
Here are the more detailed steps:
- Delete your current WLAN access point you’ve created for the E61i. This is the secret sauce.
- Now, under
Tools > Settings > Connection > Access Points
Select Options and create a new access point using “default settings”. We’ll tweak them below. - Under Connection Name, pick a name for your connection. This doesn’t have to be your wireless network’s SSID, but you can keep it under the same name.
- Under Data Bearer, select WLAN.
- Under WLAN Network Name, select manual entry and type in your SSID name.
- Under Network Status mark “Hidden”.
- Network Mode will be the default: “Infrastructure”.
- Under WLAN Security Mode, choose your security type. For instance, mine is WEP, so that’s what I selected.
- Under WLAN Security Settings, go to WEP key settings and define your encryption level, format, and key. For instance, for WEP you might have 64 bit, ASCII, and “xyzabc” as your level, format, and key respectively. If you don’t know this stuff, this entire tutorial is perhaps not for you, otherwise you know what these values are. (You can always login as admin user into your wireless router and reconfirm these settings for your specific case.)
That’s it. You can now connect to some website or your email server on your mobile phone, select the WLAN with the name you chose in Step 3 above, and your Nokia e-series phone will remember your WEP password for good. Finally.