Wifi Not Connecting?

Hi guys I am at college and I have a usb wifi device that is connected to my Linux machine that connects at home correctly. When I am at college I try connecting to the network and it fails and the network disappears. Would any of you know how to resolve this issue?

what type of network does the school have?

For mine I had to jump through a few hoops because they had it set up as PEAP

I have no idea, how do I find that out?

If it is one of those Edu-Roam type wifi networks, set encryption to WPA2-Enterprise.

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yup that’s what it was.

I have a quick question, what is the difference between WPA2 and WPA2-Enterpriise?

WPA2 is the consumer grade authentication method. WPA2 Enterprise, as the name states is typically the business method. It requires the use of a server for authentication, such as RADIUS.


Businesses (and yes your school is a business, no matter what they think they are. They’re no better than any other business.) use it so your login not only allows you computer access but also access to your domain, server, and wireless (in this case, your college’s network and however the admins control student access to certain things on the network). An admin could change your password a single time instead of having to change several: authentication is centralized!

Without WPA2 Enterprise, you’d have separate logins for everything. One login to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them). Enterprise still uses the same encryption methods as WPA2. It’s just the authentication methods are different.

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Thanks for the explanation of the difference between WPA2 and WPA2-Enterprize encryption.

You’re welcome! it’s not encrpytion, per se, it is authorization. Encryption is part of the authorization methods though, because otherwise logins would be transmitted in plaintext.

I found out it was a edu-roam. What steps did you go threw to fix the issue?

Use your college’s username and password to log into the wifi

I did that and it did not work. I have other devices on the network so I know how to do that.

Call your school’s Help Desk. They’ll be able to help you out (though they probably won’t want to).

Doesn’t matter, I found a direct access point with a cat cable but I tried all that as well.

look for "how to connect to PEAP wifi"
and then login with your username and password creds.

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