WPA-PSK breaks our network!

Flying_V · 5 Sep 2006 at 18:30

Ok, finally caved in today and disabled WPA-PSK on all three wireless access points in our building. We have had so many disconnections and wireless drop outs that its the only solution. So now we have security disabled and broadcast of SSID set to off. Not much security I know :rolleyes:

Is there any reason why WPA-PSK (using TKIP) wouldn't work and would stop our DHCP on the network giving out IP addresses? Because everything is working 100% now - in the future I may try WEP but I/and our users need a rest first!

tolien · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:10

Because the key's wrong/drivers are crappy/wireless APs are crappy?

VeNT · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:56

or could be that the cards don't realy support it
I had some netgear cards sold as "WPA supported" (WG511T or somthing) but they wouldn't untill I downloaded the latest drivers from the site.
over a wireless network.
wellcome to half an hour of messing around with a USB stick and a cat5e cable.

tolien · 5 Sep 2006 at 21:05

VeNT said:
or could be that the cards don't realy support it
I had some netgear cards sold as "WPA supported" (WG511T or somthing) but they wouldn't untill I downloaded the latest drivers from the site.

They qualify under my second reason

Bobster · 6 Sep 2006 at 10:02

What kind of Wireless Access Points are you using?

Flying_V · 6 Sep 2006 at 10:22

We're using Netgear and Linksys consumer grade boxes. All the laptops supposedly support WPA-PSK security - everything is 100% stable now with the security disabled.

We never had a problem with keys matching - it was definately sudden disconnections on multiple access points and IP addresses not being issued to laptops. I tried setting the 3 points on channels 1,6 and 11 so they don't overlap, and broadcasting the SSID as I heard that could cause windows to drop connections (made no difference).

If money/time/disruption wasn't an issue I suppose it would be interesting to see if cisco cards and cisco access points worked 100%.

tolien · 6 Sep 2006 at 11:54

So you weren't running WDS? Did it work with a single separate wireless AP?

Flying_V · 6 Sep 2006 at 22:58

Sorry what's WDS (probably being thick here). It didn't work with one access point using WPA-PSK - everything worked until I had the bright idea of using security and locking everything down. I intially wanted to have just 1 SSID for all 3 access points and for clients to roam automatically.

tolien · 6 Sep 2006 at 23:00

Flying_V said:
I intially wanted to have just 1 SSID for all 3 access points and for clients to roam automatically.

That's WDS.

Tried firmware upgrading the APs, and/or trying the client machines on an AP you know works fine with WPA-PSK?

Flying_V · 7 Sep 2006 at 09:31

Yeah, they all have the latest firmware. No access point was completely stable - at one point (and I couldn't believe this was happening) I got 3 people connected - as the fourth laptop went on it knocked him and everybody else off in one go!

Tried again with just him and one other user - sure enough he knocks them off too. Its so peaceful and relaxing now but obviously security is totally flawed now so I need to try WEP. Is there a better chance of this working?