t e c h i e - t a l k s ::: technology at its best

OK here’s my first tech post for this year! It’s a short description on how to get connected in NUS using Intel PRO/Wireless.

I’ve had lots people complaining to me that their connection to the main wireless network in NUS is always bad. Furthermore, most of the time, they could only connect to the alternative NUS wireless network which needs them to login manually online in order to use the connection. These problems are from students who do not buy their laptops from school or from those who re-installed their Windows XP after purchasing their laptops from school.

There are a couple of solutions to these problems. The first solution is to re-install the necessary NUS connectivity softwares like CISCO Lan, the login scripts, etc. This is the option that you’ll be offered if you bring your laptop to the Computer Center (COMCEN) at NUS. Well, this is the easiest method and by far the most efficient way of connecting to NUS networks but it comes with a price. The price is; your administrative rights to your computer. There will be times when certain things that you need to install or delete from your computer requires administrative rights. This is when the situation could get sticky and you’ll probably loose some of your hair over this issue. For example, installing CISCO will devoid you from having admin rights in connecting with other networks. Thus, you’ll find it difficult to share folders wirelessly at home with your house computer or enjoy the ease of wireless printer sharing at home. On top of that, logging into windows outside of NUS can be a dreadfully slow.

However, installing these programs will ease your connectivity in NUS. You’ll no longer have to setup your own wireless profile (which I show you how to later in this article) and re-logging into NUS networks like IVLE or NUSMAIL. So weighing the pros and cons, you’ll have to decide which camp you belong to.

I obviously chose to rebel. Who wants to be ripped of computer administrative rights of your own personal mobile laptop after paying so much for it? Or suffer from laggy logins at home as your laptop frantically tries to find the NUS wireless SSID. I hated it from the first time I tried to connect my laptop to my home wireless network. I couldn’t print from my laptop through my print server, share files across my house network, stream videos from my server to my laptop and even find it difficult to personalize my lappy! Thus, I un-installed the copy of Windows XP that was installed on my laptop and re-installed a clean version of XP.

Last year, getting connected to NUS was quite easy. It was really a piece of cake. A simple tweaked to the Intel PRO/Wireless program can solve it straight away. However, since the beginning of 06/07 semester, it seems that NUS have changed their network profiles and settings. I asked around and a friend of mine (who heads linuxNUS) pointed out that they actually changed their network security to PEAP. (and not informing the students about it??) He too nicely gave me to a link to setting up the necessary network settings.

However, the guide was for users who use windows to manage their wireless network. But most of us use Intel PRO/Wireless to manage our networks! Grrrr… After spending sometime tweaking and configuring the settings, I managed to get it up and working perfectly! Haha.. So for those of you who use Intel PRO/Wireless to manage you wireless networks, this guide is for you guys!

Hope this solves everyone’s headache of getting a connection with the SSID of NUS and not NUSOPEN.

1. Firstly, open up your Intel PRO/Wireless program and click on profile.
2. Click on Add, which will then pop up a new window.
3. Under profile, type anything that you wanna name this profile. I used “NUS”
4. Under Network SSID name, type NUS
5. Then, click next to bring you to the next screen. Here, check the box beside Enterprise Security
6. Network Authentication : Open
7. Data Encryption: WEP
8. Check on the box beside 802.1x
9. Select PEAP under Authentication type
10. Authentication Protocol: MS-CHAP-V2
11. User Credentials: Use the following
1. Username: your NUSNET ID
2. Domain: NUSST
3. U
4. Password: NUSNET password
5. Roaming identity: Anything you wanna be referred to

On the top left hand corner of the menu, click PEAP Server

12. Check the box beside Validate Server Candidate
13. Under Certificate Issuer, choose Thawte Premium Server CA
14. Check the box beside Specify Server or Certificate Name

Ok this is where the available guide got confusing. Unlike the windows wireless management program which allows you to specify the servers name (NUS is using 4 different server domains) all in one line by separating them with a “;”, this doesn’t work with Intel PRO/Wireless. This can be of a headache because different places around campus, you’ll need different domain server names. I used to make more than one profile for NUS SSID alone. LOL!

I found a work around which works perfectly. Under “Server Certificate Name”, type “nus.edu.sg” without the open and close inverted commas. Then, check the button “Domain name must end with a specific entry”.

What this does is that it looks for all the domain names which ends with *.nus.edu.sg and connects you to that server. Click OK and there you go! Enjoy the ease of connecting to NUS w/o always logging in through the web. I attach some pictures to let you guys see what the final thing look like.