WPA woes
 

I just got my N900 and it's a great device for the most part, but it seems to absolutely not get along with my WPA-protected home network. Actually, it worked fine at first and continued to do so for a few hours after I initially turned it on, but then the problems started.

Basically the connection will stop working and then I will get an 'Authentication failed' message and it will ask me to enter my WPA pre-shared key again. This is despite the fact that the key I initially entered was working for a while and I certainly didn't change anything. After getting this message the first time, no matter how many times I enter the key again it will never work. If I reboot the device a couple times, reboot the router, and pray I might be able to get the connection working again...for a couple of minutes. Inevitably I will start having the same problem again soon enough.

Despite what the device is telling me I am not at all convinced that this is an authentication issue. In fact, if I look at my router's log I see a bunch of messages saying 'Authentication success' with the N900's MAC address. I think the actual problem it's having is that it's not getting an IP address for some reason.

However, I have had absolutely no problem connecting to other networks. Actually, I've resorted to stealing the neighbor's wifi since it doesn't want to talk to my router...but that is not a solution. I do not want to disable the WPA encryption on my network just to get my N900 to work and I shouldn't have to.

Any suggestions?

Re: WPA woes
 

I have the same problem with my router; all other devices have no problem to connect to wpa but N900. I've switched to wpa2 and everything works fine (of course you'll have to change settings in all the other wi-fi clients to wpa2). using a b/g trendware wan - wlan.

Re: WPA woes
 

It may be worth checking if there is any newer firmware for your router and consider updating if there is.
I had a similar issue a few years back with my LinkSys router - all devices except one connected using WPA. I flashed the router to the latest firmware and then everything connected.

Re: WPA woes
 

Use the search button my friend, I created a post yesterday specifically for this issue as I was having the same problem. Their are quite a few answers already so I suggest you just use that search forum function...or click on my name...

Re: WPA woes
 

Unfortunately, switching to WPA2 has done nothing. Updating the router's firmware did nothing. Disabling scanning on the N900 does nothing. The problem remains exactly the same.

Re: WPA woes
 

Honestly, if anything the problem has gotten worse. I mentioned in my first post that by rebooting the device I was able to get connected for at least a little while but that doesn't even work anymore. I simply cannot connect at all. Again, according to my router's log authentication is successful everytime. But the N900 is not happy for some reason and keeps trying to reconnect.

Is there a cache or something I can clear out? I have occasionally had similar problems on my laptop (running Debian) which I would solve by deleting some files in /var/run and restarting wpa_supplicant however I do not how to do the equivalent here (I do have rootsh installed).

Re: WPA woes
 

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35097 I don't know if this is relevant to your problem at all, but maybe worth checking just in case?

Re: WPA woes
 

Try:
- changing channels (using either 1, 6, or 11 is recommended)
- increasing the access point transmit power (if possible, don't go higher than 80mw on most consumer grade gear)
- disabling afterburner/speedbooster
- disabling CTS protection
- disabling frameburst
- forcing the preamble to long
- using WPA with only TKIP (as a last resort, TKIP is not as secure as AES, but is generally better supported)

Keep in mind this is a small device with a small 802.11 antenna - this will cause issues where you would not normally have them with other devices (that have higher gain antennas). Any interference (whether from other 802.11 or bluetooth, microwaves, cordless phones, etc) will also be more difficult to overpower, since there is less antenna gain and possibly less transmit power on the N900 end. In other words - if you are seeing this problem within a few feet of an access point it's most likely a software/configuration issue, but if you are much further away it's more likely a hardware limitation of a pocketable device.

Re: WPA woes
 

It's not a connection strength issue. I'm right next to the router and the network strength is the maximum possible.

I'm already using TKIP.

I installed wireless-tools and ran iwevent. I'm copying what I saw by hand so I'll summarize:

wlan0 Custom driver event:ASSOCINFO (ReqIEs=<stuff> Resp=<stuff>)
wlan0 New Access Point/Cell address:<router MAC>
wlan0 New Access Point/Cell address:Not-Associated
wlan0 Set Frequency:2.412 Ghz (Channel 1)
wlan0 Scan request completed

Then repeat that block ad infinitum. Not terribly helpful, I know...

Re: WPA woes
 

Not that this is a solution or anything but in case anyone else is following I should note that I found the following bug which seems to be exactly my problem:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6173