WiFi WPA/PSK troubles

[anpaza]

Hello!

I tried today to switch my access point from WEP128 which I was using for some time to WPA. My access point gives the following choices:

Open System
Shared Key
WPA-Personal
WPA2-Personal
WPA-Auto-Personal (???)
WPA-Enterprise
WPA2-Enterprise
Radius

The supported encryption algorithms are:

TKIP
AES
TKIP+AES

Also if TKIP or AES is selected (with Personal auth) it also allows to set WEP encryption to either WEP64 or WEP128.

Unfortunately, if I set the access point to any of the Personal auth modes, the only encryption algorithm that works with my N810 is TKIP. If I select AES or TKIP+AES, n810 will tell me that the network is incompatible or something like that.

Also if I enable WEP encryption I get the same result.

So in the end I have to choose between using a Shared Key system (with WEP encryption) or a WPA(2)-Personal system with TKIP encryption.

Does n810 support AES encryption at all (so this is some problem with my router), or I'll have to stay with TKIP encryption? As far as I understand, TKIP is a derivative of WEP which is weak.

[stevecrye]

hi;
We are also having problems with wpa/psk. we have thousands of cisco APs ; laptops have no problems with wpa/psk. But , my n810 and also our hp ipaq 210 only work if we use wep (open auth, psk) and turn off tkip.

perhaps together we can sly this drqgon.
Steve

[IcelandDreams]

Interesting, I'm using an old WRT54G v4 on tomato 1.19. I am set to WPA-Personal with TKIP/AES. No doubt that the N8 uses TKIP since it doesn't seem to have the hardware for AES. This is working for me. I have two units set to this and the N8 roams between them over a couple of acres.

[alephito]

I have two WRT54GL running Tomato with WPA2 Personal and WPA Personal (I have one Wireless Print Server than can't do WPA2, but that is another story) and my N810 works OK.

The only issue I have is when the N810 drops the connection and I have to reboot the router in order to reconnect. This happened a couple of times in the last month.

[Kaervak]

My 770 has no problems using WPA2 AES on my network. I'd be really surprised if the n8xx series couldn't use AES. As far as TKIP being derived from WEP, that's somewhat true. WPA uses the same RC4 encryption algorithm as WEP. However, it's implemented differently than WEP. For a far better explanation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equivalent_Privacy

[stevecrye]

We suspect the problem is with our WPA-PSK config on the Cisco 1242s. iPaq 210s also fail to connect. Our PSK is 64 hex characters, we are not using EAP. We have thousands of laptops that connect fine, but the new PDAs seem to only like WEP.

We are wondering if the 64 character key is too long. Anyone heard of PDAs only supporting 63 character keys?

Steve

[sjgadsby]

We are wondering if the 64 character key is too long. Anyone heard of PDAs only supporting 63 character keys?

Yes. This has been discussed previously (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18929).

[stevecrye]

Hi;
I read through that other thread but am still a bit confused ... please be gentle... :confused:

Where I work we have literally ~ 1500 APs, and at present we don't have WCS deployed, so each one has to be manually configured one at a time. Another complication is the ~ 9000 deployed laptops that are using the 64 hex character PSK.

On the AP in my office, I added another SSID and gave it a shorter (26 hex character) PSK, that worked OK with the N810.

I had been using copy/paste to put the 64 char key into the connection config dialogs. A window would pop up saying "max number of characters reached" - bot not exceeded.

Because we can't change the 64 char PSK at our ~ 100 sites, or easily add new SSIDs with shorter keys, I would love more information on how to use gconftool-2 -R /system/osso/connectivity/IAP/ to edit the actual PSK on the N810. Where can I get the tool, + a bit of insight as to what I will do with it.

Also, if you would remind me of the difference between the passphrase and the key, that would be a great help.

Loving my n810 more and more every day - Linux in my pocket!

Steve