HOWTO_Wireless_Configuration_for_TUDelft

Wireless Networking on TUDelft

The TU Delft uses WPA with EAP-TTLS and PAP authentication on it's WLAN network. It's not really hard to set up, but you got to know the right settings. This page only focuses on the software setup of networking at TU Delft. If you want to get it working without spending your time on reading this entire page, just read the titles for the code snippets that appear in this page, they will do for setting it up without knowing what you've really done.

Install wpa_supplicant

You'll need wpa_supplicant to have decent WPA support, so emerge it:

# emerge -va wpa_supplicant

Setup /etc/conf.d/net

You need to enable wpa_supplicant in the net config and put options for the 'eduroam' network (the ESSID, previously you had to connect to WLAN) there so it will know what to do when connected.

# wpa_supplicant
modules=( "wpa_supplicant" )
wpa_supplicant_eth1="-Dwext -ieth1"
wpa_timeout_eth1=10

config_eduroam=( "dhcp" )
dhcpcd_eduroam="-t 10"

Although this was exactly as I used it some time ago, I now just have these two lines:

modules=( "wpa_supplicant" )
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext"

Replace -Dwext with -D<your-driver-name> to tell wpa_supplicant what driver to use (new ipw2200 use wext).

Setup /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Last step is editing the wpa_supplicant.conf config file:

# wpa supplicant config
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
ap_scan=1

network={
        ssid="eduroam"
        key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
        eap=TTLS
        identity="<netID>@tudelft.nl"
        password="<netID-password>"
        phase2="auth=PAP"
}

Especially the line 'phase2="auth=PAP"' is important, since it will otherwise just fail to authenticate.

Troubleshooting

What if it just won't work? Run wpa_supplicant by hand and see if it will connect:

# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd

If you don't get whether it is connected or not, use iwconfig:

# iwconfig eth1

If this shows 'Associated' you're connected. Last but not least, run dhcpcd to get an ip-address:

# dhcpcd eth1

If this hangs, something is probably still not the way it should be.