Just got my n800 and love it. Unfortunately, I'm unable to access the WIFI at my work. I think it's a WPA2 connection, but I can't be positive. The wierd thing is, my n800 saw it right away as an unlocked connection and I was able to connect without issue. Nothing worked of course.

So, following some instructions from previous threads, I went to "connectivity settings" and edited the now saved connection. By default it was setup as "Ad hoc" so I changed it to Infrastructure (only did this so I could select WPA with EAP). Then, I set EAP type to PEAP (who knows why). EAP method=EAP MSCHAPv2 (???). Entered in my username as DOMAIN\USERNAME and password. Finish.

Now, when I go to "Select connection", this connection isn't listed anymore!!! Where did it go? Is there a way to force a connection to my newly saved settings without scanning for it first?

I also got ahold of some certificate that I think I probably need (not sure why) and installed it without issue on my n800.


Questions.
1. As you can probably tell, I'm a bit lost here. Is this supposed to work?
2. Any idea what i'm doing wrong/right?
3. How can I find out exactly what type of network I have at the office? Is there some sort of network utility I can install on my Vista PC that shows me all the settings? PEAP/EAS/TKIP? (I have no idea what all these acronyms are!)

Thanks so much for any guidance.

You are probably connecting to the wrong SSID since you would not be able to associate. The default is not ad-hoc, but that's the style of network that you connected to ( you can tell by the dot over the wireless signal ).

Find the hidden network SSID for the WPA2 network and setup manually. I believe it should work.

PEAP = Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol
EAP = Extensible Authentication Protocol
TKIP = Temporal Key Integrity Protocol

...and, of course, the easiest method of determining which settings you should use for your wifi at work is to ask your network administrator and/or IT department. They should be able to either tell you how to connect, or that you shouldn't be connecting.

Why do I always run into the bugs?!?

This is my issue: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=950

Has anybody found a way around this? This is a huge let down...

I am not sure that bug is related to yours - it seems it's talking about some weird WEP + authentication. AFAIK, username/password authentication was only standardized for WPA/WPA2.

Anyways, one big gotcha is that for WPA(2?) with PEAP MSCHAP whatever, it's necesary to manually create the connection and go to "advanced settings" and select "manual username" and enter the username again. It seems like this is a workaround for some overly zealous access points. Apparently, there's a two-state authentication happening and the WPA spec says that the first step, the username can be random and only in the second step, the right username/password has to be supplied. Some access points require a valid username in the first step already, which that option is for. (At least that's my understanding - maybe someone with more detailed knowledge can correct me).

At any rate, try the "manual username" option and see if that works. You only get there when you manually add a connections using the wizard. (In the end, hit "advanced" and you get four tabs - one is "EAP" and it contains the "use manual user name" options)


Martin

Ok, here's the deal. I was confusing a few different connections. We have and 802.11a (WPA2) network as well as an 802.11g (WEP) network. When I was looking at my laptop I saw all the WPA stuff and assumed it was the same for my n800. However, I then disabled the 'a' interface on my laptop NIC and saw that it automatically connected to the 'g' WEP network. I then checked the properties and see this:
Security Type: 802.1x
Encryption Type: WEP

I then found a doc on our IT web page that shows how to configure a Windows Mobile phone to connect to the wifi 'g' network. Here is the piece that concerns me:
===================
Authentication: Open
Data Encryptions: WEP
-This Key is Automatically Provided must be checked/selected
Select Menu -> 802.1x. Configure the following:
-Use IEEE 802.1x network access control must be checked/selected
-EAP Type: Smart Card or Certificate
===================

So... it appears I am on some sort of crazy WEP/802.1x auto provided key system. From the internal docs I've read, it appears that Windows Mobile 5/6 phones seem to support this out of the box.

I'll try manually configuring a WPA connection and setting the "manual username" as you suggested tomorrow, however it seems pretty clear to me that we are indeed on a WEP network.

Here's another bug which as quite a bit more info: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=417

One of the comments recommends your same solution of using the manual name. I'll try this tomorrow, but I highly doubt it will work since the only way to get to this screen is to change the network type to WPA when it should be WEP. If I do change it to WPA, then I'm not able to see the custom network when scanning for networks.

No such luck. The problem is that I cannot even attempt to connect to my newly created custom connection because it is not presented to me when I "Select connection".

Very frustrating... I wish there was a way to manually connect without searching.

I also wish the n800 supported 802.1x WEP connections as it seems quite common from all the searching I've been doing...