haha, Excitebike!

We called it a Joystick Ow-wee

You're not the first person to mention LEAP or PEAP support. These are actually an authentication protocols, that happen use WEP and WPA encryption, respectively.

Your problem is that NetworkManager itself does not support LEAP or PEAP authentication when negotiating a connection with your access point.

You may want to try http://www.wicd.net/ as an alternative to NetworkManager (it too has some shortcomings) or there are some howtos online for making LEAP/PEAP work (Google "ubuntu LEAP")

Good luck :)

I think this is the reason why the eeepc and other netbooks have been so cheap.

They tend to use newer hardware components that do not have a track record for rock-solid support in linux and windows. Manufacturers (Asus isn't the only one) select bids from the vendors with the lowest price.

Its not a coincidence that other non-Asus products end up with similar wifi/ethernet cards as Asus (Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind specifically), and thus have the exact same problems in support on linux.

What makes this rt2860 driver particularly unusual is that there are existing internal (community supplied) Linux kernel drivers for other ralink hardware available, but this rt2860 deviates from them so much, existing drivers useless for this hardware.

Coupled with the fact that Ralink has done such a poor job with version control, IMHO, (See reasons #2 and #3 above) it only causes endless greif for someone who automatically assumes that the latest version is always the greatest.

"Huh?.. rt2860 v1.8.0.0 doesn't contain anything fixed from v1.7.1.1?? But its got a higher number! WTF?"

I beg to differ.

1. As I mentioned before, the latest version on their site is rt2860 v1.8.0.0. While it will work for some wireless, it will not work with WPA/WPA2 encryption. v1.7.0.0 had the same problem

2. Ralink fixed WPA/WPA2 encryption in v1.7.1.1, but these changes were never ported to v1.8.0.0, and only that version is available from their site. Zero mention of these problems, or previous working versions.

3. I cannot even find the original location where I downloaded v1.7.1.1 anymore. I think I got it over email as an "EEEPC Special Version".

4. Open the source code the overall code is very sloppy. Goto statements, few comments, bad spacing and wording, poor naming conventions, i'm surprised it compiles. (FYI, Compile with EEEPC_SPECIAL_SETTING enabled on v1.7.1.1 to fix WPA/WPA2 encryption, I kid you not!)

5. Ralink has no indention of supporting their Linux drivers. Greg KH has included their v1.8.0.0 under the kernel as a staging driver with a TODO":

        Please send any patches or complaints about this driver to Greg
        Kroah-Hartman and don't bother the upstream wireless
        kernel developers about it, they want nothing to do with it.

For anyone interested, here's the patch that fixes WPA/WPA2 on 2.6.29-rc6... but it will work on 2.6.28 and later.

http://git.array.org/?p=kernel/stable/linux-2.6-stable.git;a=commit;h=ee8834f5551943b7bd2db49bbad9ba3c24ce6f67

(pending upstream inclusion)

There is an issue I've seen with the wifi driver included in 2.6.28 and jaunty on the EeePC 901 and higher.

The module rt2860sta v1.8.0.0 has very poor WPA/WPA2 support. Your wifi is working probably because you connect to a WEP network.

I have a patch for this available for 2.6.29, but it will also soon be available on the array.org/ubuntu kernel.

(I'm working on a jaunty netbook kernel which will address this WPA/WPA2 issue, too)

Can you do me a favour?

Run $ sudo lspci -v -nn

and forward the output to my contact page on array.org/ubuntu/about.html

I might be able to give you an answer.

Here's the rule of thumb I've followed... however I've only tested this with the Linux version. (I wasn't aware that Windows EeePC 901s use Atheros)

EeePC ==701SD: Realtek Wifi
EeePC <900A: Atheros Wifi
EeePC >=901: RaLink Wifi

As a result, the modules, depending on the version of Linux you're using varies.

Atheros Wifi on <=2.6.24: ath_pci (madwifi) external driver
Atheros Wifi on >=2.6.26: ath5k internal driver
RaLink Wifi on < 2.6.28: rt2860sta external driver
RaLink Wifi on > 2.6.28: rt2860sta internal driver*
Realtek Wifi on < 2.6.28: rtl8187se external driver
Realtek Wifi on > 2.6.29: rtl8187se internal driver

* Heres the crux, as of 2.6.28, the rt2860sta internal driver uses version 1.8.0.0, but this version has broken WPA/WPA2 support. If you somehow ended up with 1.7.0.0, it too has broken WPA/WPA2 support.

However, rt2860sta v1.7.1.1 appears to be good.

I've been working on porting the changes introduced in v1.7.1.1 into v1.8.x.x for 2.6.29. So far it works for me, but I still need to submit this as a patch into the kernel:

http://git.array.org/?p=kernel/stable/linux-2.6-stable.git;a=commit;h=ee8834f5551943b7bd2db49bbad9ba3c24ce6f67

That's a decent walkthru document. I actually didn't know about the IPv6 compatibility issues.

I should cite on my site.

With my 900, i've had no issues using the ath5k drivers compared to the ndiswrapper method or the older madwifi drivers.

I've posted an update to the repository from the upstream ath5k developers. This is currently available as 2.6.27-11-eeepc

You may install this version by hand to test, as its not being pushed out automatically yet.

$ sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.27-11-eeepc

-Adam

I totally agree.

Even though Ubuntu-Eee, Easy Peasy, Eeebuntu and others all sell themselves as a EeePC-specific distro, what makes them support this is the eeepc kernel itself.

It handles the wireless, wired, FSB modules, and other misc kernel enhancements in one fell swoop.

In other words, it is possible (and I personally recommend it) that you install Stock ubuntu then throw on the eeepc kernel afterwords.

After all, I wrote it :D

-- Adam McDaniel