Re: C720 Chromebook - wifi connection drops

mbonadie — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:35:20 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply. If a quick resolution could be implemented, this would make a lot of end-users happier with their perceived "wireless experience". Keep us in the loop!

Re: C720 Chromebook - wifi connection drops

mbonadie — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 19:32:22 GMT

I am a wireless engineer and I have been testing this Acer Chromebook for the last few days and here is what I have found. The 802.1X supplicant drivers do not work correctly, which means that the supplicant driver is failing, not the wireless system. Layer 3 devices (routers) have no idea what is going on in the Layer 2 (access point association, 802.1X, switches, DHCP) processes. The Chromebook will associate to the access point just fine, and then the failure happens during the EAP 4-way handshake authentication process and the wireless system drops the client. As a result, the client never gets an IP address because it can never pass the wireless authentication process to move onto the DHCP process. Other wireless engineers have found that if they use TKIP instead of PEAP that the Chromebook works great. But, TKIP is slower and not secure and PEAP MSCHAPv2 is part of our design. We wouldn't change to TKIP for such a small amount of wireless clients plus that would open up potential security issues.

So, since 802.1X is client-derived, and the Chromebook is failing 802.1X, it's only safe to assume that there is a issue with the Chromebook's drivers. Maybe Acer & Google should look into the bug together since they made the device.

mbonadie Tracker

Re: C720 Chromebook - wifi connection drops

Re: C720 Chromebook - wifi connection drops