Unable to work with Android on a Corporate Network with WPA/WPA2 security. Always disconnects?

Question

My Nexus One (Gingerbread) and Samsung Galaxy Tab (Honeycomb) both stopped connecting to my corporate network that uses WPA/WPA2 wireless connections. What is strange is that, both the devices worked for at least 2-3 weeks before both of them (at different times) started going through a strange Scanning->Authenticating->Connecting->Disconnected phase. After the last phase, it shows Disabled, secured with 802.1x EAP.

Upon Googling, there seems to be a number of open tickets (e.g. here, here and at least 5 others) related to this problem. Because both my devices were working before this, I was wondering what could have gone wrong. Obviously, long-pressing on the wireless point and selecting Forget Network and then re-entering the network details is not helping so there must be some other way of doing this (possibly an application?). Any suggestions?

What I can do:

My Nexus One is rooted so I can probably delete any .conf files. The only problem is that my wpa_supplicant.conf does not have any connection specific information

What I cannot do:

Change anything related to the access point because it is not under my control. This problem is definitely a client-side problem from all the bug reports that I've read.

Russelrussell

Answer 1

Finally, after two months of banging my head, here's a solution that worked for me. The following assumes that your WiFi connection is not working but you have a data cable that you can use to transfer files. You may not have the exact screen as shown in the screenshots. That's because I am using a different ROM for my device but the overall steps will not change.

Step 1: Get an alternate WiFi configuration editor

• I used WiFi Advanced Configuration Editor, which is an open source project available here. Install from the Android Market here

Step 2: Modify the WiFi settings

• Open WiFi Advanced Configuration Editor
• Select your WiFi network
• Select Key Management

• You will probably see that WPA_EAP and IEEE8021X are set to Enabled or ON. Let WPA_EAP stay as it is but turn off IEEE8021X. In the end, it should look like the following:

• Hit the Back button on your device to go back one screen. DO NOT QUIT THE APPLICATION YET!

Step 3: Re-enter your password

• In the screen that you selected Key Management from, select Enterprise Configuration.

• Select Password and enter your password and hit OK to save it
• Hit the Back button on your device three times to exit the application.

And that's it! If it works, congratulations and welcome to the bug-skipped bandwagon. If it didn't, sorry for taking your time. But hopefully, Google will fix this nasty bug soon.

Russelrussell