[laptop-discuss] [nwam-discuss] NWAM and dladm_wlan_connect() handling of incorrect WEP keys

[Alan Maguire]

Peter Memishian wrote:
>  > initially i figured that this could be solved by launching a popup on
>  > getting an appropriate errorcode from dladm_wlan_connect(), but in
>  > experimenting with correct and incorrect WEP keys (using the iwi
>  > driver), i discovered that dladm_wlan_connect() (and "dladm
>  > connect-wifi") returns success whether the key is correct or not, and
>  > the status of the link is reported as connected in both cases. i tried
>  > in vain to find something that differentiates the state of the link
>  > between the correct/incorrect WEP key cases, but the only difference
>  > seems to be that in the latter case, DHCP doesn't work, for obvious
>  > reasons. i'm wondering if this lack of reporting of connection failure
>  > is a limitation of the driver i'm using, an issue with WiFi in general,
>  > a bug, or pilot error in how i'm using dladm_wlan_connect() perhaps. or
>  > is it that the connection succeded, but the association failed? i'm a
>  > bit lost, so any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! thanks!
>
> Sadly, I don't think there's any reliable way to do what you'd like to do
> here.  The problem is that when open-system authentication is used, the
> authentication occurs without needing to use the key.  So the connect
> operation will work fine, even if the key is wrong.  However, data traffic
> will not flow.
>
>   
thanks for the info meem! can you think of any other way
to diagnose an incorrect WLAN key that doesn't involve
non-response from a DHCP server (since we don't
want to lump DHCP server failures in with incorrect
WLAN keys)? i played around with this thinking
the opkts statistics might help, but the DHCP
requests are counted even in this case of course. thanks!

alan