WIFI connectivity issues with WPA2 enterprise and Lubuntu 13.10 and up

[Aere Greenway]

On 10/24/2014 06:50 AM, Marc Tremblay wrote:
>
> The connectivity issue occurs on all of our laptops no matter what 
> make or model. In general at our school board the older laptops and 
> netbooks we are converting are Toshiba Tecra A9, A10 and A11's. The 
> Netbooks are NB 200's, 250's and 350's. We also have Dell laptops and 
> HP laptops in smaller numbers.
>
>
Marc:

I have a number of laptops using wireless (including an HP NetBook), and 
they work with all of the system levels I have used Lubuntu on (11.10, 
12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, and now 14.10).  So the problem is 
not with all laptops.

It is a problem with the particular set of laptops you are working with.

I did have an old wireless-card (for desktop machines) that I used to 
use, and could easily install the drivers for, but with later levels, 
the drivers were no longer available, and I had to just take out the 
wireless card, and use a wireless dongle instead.

If you can see your wireless network (and others), it is an indication 
that your wireless hardware is probably supported, and working.

I did have the problem with the nm-applet not appearing on the task-bar, 
and had to follow the steps to fix that.  That problem seemed to be 
specific to Lubuntu 14.04.

Some wireless dongles work out-of-the-box (and will see my wireless 
network without any special setup).  Others do not (usually on those, I 
have to install the b43-firmware-installer (or some name like that) 
package.  After installing the required drivers, the wireless then sees 
the wireless router, and works.

If you have a wireless dongle that works out-of-the-box, you can plug it 
into the machine whose wireless isn't working, and install any necessary 
supporting software, after which the wireless dongle won't be needed on 
that machine, because its internal wireless will work.

My HP-NetBook (and one of my MacBooks) were in the category above, where 
I had to install b43-firmware-installer before their internal wireless 
would work.  I have an Acer Aspire laptop, a MacBook, and a Sony Vaio 
laptop, that their internal wireless worked out-of-the-box.

When I try out a new system release level, I first start by running the 
live-CD (DVD), and see if I can get my wireless to work.  An Ethernet 
cable connection always seems to work (for me).

I hope my experiences detailed above can help you with your particular 
problems.

-- 
Sincerely,
Aere