I’ve done some tinkering of some embedded laptop wireless adapters and uncovered some interesting things. Of course, the process is still tricky, however with a little common sense, this process can actually be made simple.
I performed these tests using the ubuntu 10.10 liveCD. There is a benefit to using this for testing. Whatever you do on the liveCD is never saved, and I like this very much. Well this is how testing should be done. You have a way to resort back to default settings without performing extra steps. Speed, again, is my life force. The more speed, the more you can get done, and the less you have to do.
I’ve used a Toshiba Satellite notebook with an AMD dual core processor 64bit. One of the special features of this system is that you do not need to download the wireless driver b34 broadcom. The connection the my companies wi-fi was seamless. Even after dis-connecting and re-connecting, the process was still simple. This was compared to my home wireless router.
At home, of course, security is the all time priority. Not just the internet. The security settings I come to like are the WPA/WPA2 personal encryption. Connecting required a password and SSID. Once connected, system functions. However, re-connecting became a problem. The router physically was fine, yet I noticed some flaws in the security settings.
As I said before, I’m using the WPA/WPA2 authentication method. In addition, WEP was being used. One was authentication and the other was for encryption. Interesting enough, WPA/WPA2 was also an option for encryption. I set both authentication and encryption modes to WPA/WPA2 personal and changed my password. After re-connecting several times, everything worked.
Here is my conclusion, when connecting wireless to a secured router, all authentication settings must be coherent, meaning properly configured. Linux does not like to guess what you want to use. Using one particular authentication method should be the primary. In other words, use one authentication mode.
For Wi-Fi, this is not much of a problem. Public Wi-Fi are usually configured correctly. All it takes a few mouse clicks to achieve service. This also means agreeing to the terms policy.
To sum it up, when setting up a secured infrastructure router, use one authentication method. The same applies to Wi-Fi setup. Sticking to these standards, you should not have much trouble being mobile.
