Fix for topic: "Connected wireless once using WPA, cannot connect again"

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 13:49 -0600, Michael Schwager wrote:
> Ladies and Germs,
> A few days ago I submitted an email to the NetworkManager list,
> regarding my laptop no longer connecting to my wireless AP, tho it did
> at first.  A snippet follows.  It turns out, I fixed the problem.
> 
> My wireless SSID broadcast was off.  When I turned it on, *voila!*
> wireless works.  I don't think that's right; I should be able to
> connect to my wireless AP even if not broadcasting my SSID.  If I know
> what my SSID is, I don't need to broadcast it.  Thanks.

Not entirely true; if you don't broadcast your SSID, then wpa_supplicant
isn't necessarily able to determine your APs capabilities from a scan,
and therefore isn't able to automatically set up the ciphers that your
AP supports, or other capabilities of the AP.

So basically, WPA + non-broadcasting SSID isn't going to work reliably
until 0.7, where if you don't broadcast hte SSID, you'll have to
manually configure your ciphers and other information before NM will
allow you to connect.  That's just life.

Besides, non-broadcasting of SSIDs is pretty much useless since your
SSID is transmitted _in the clear_ whenever you attempt to [re]associate
to the AP.  It's not really protection at all.

Dan

> 
> -- snippet --
> I'm running Kubuntu Edgy and I had gotten my Thinkpad T60 up and
> running using KNetworkManager.  Versions:
> uname -a : Linux rodin 2.6.17-10-386 #2 Fri Oct 13 18:41:40 UTC 2006
> i686 GNU/Linux
> wpa_supplicant: 0.5.4
> network-manager: 0.6.3-2ubuntu6
> 
> Network card is an Intel 3945abg.  I'm using WPA-PSK, TKIP algorithm.
> 
> After getting it working, I rebooted into Windows.  (don't ask me
> why... :-).  Used Windows for a coupla weeks, then went back to
> Ubuntu.  Wireless network no longer works.
> 
>