connecting a nokia with symbian os to the eduroam network

Have you had problems connecting your nokia phone running the symbian os to the eduroam network?

I remember trying to connect my nokia e63 to the eduroam network and struggling with it for days, there was a very detailed manual on how to set up the symbian os for the eduroam network and at one glance it seemed fairly easy.

However, it was a big headache getting it to work. I tried in vain a number of times and I knew something was missing. I will try to list the steps below on how to get connected. In my case I found that it was the AddTrust certificate that was missing, the trick is to get the correct certificate and upload it to your phone and get your phone to accept it.

First, update your phone software to the latest version and that should include all the certificates you need, if the relevant certificate is missing you will have to find, download and manually load that on to your phone.

Connect your symbian phone to your computer and update it using the nokia ovi suite or pc suite whichever version you are using. A note of caution here, make sure your phone is fully charged before you do this.

After this is done follow the instructions on the eduroam setup page of your university, these instructions are mostly the same, in case you need to go through them again, I am listing the instructions here, please check if there is any difference with your university's instruction page.

Go to your phone menu

• open tools

• go to settings

• go to connection

 

• open access points

• click on options and open 'new access point'

• change 'connection name' to Eduroam
• change 'data bearer' to wireless lan

• change 'access point' name to eduroam
• change the 'WLAN network name' to eduroam
• Set the 'Network status' to Public

• Set the 'WLAN network mode' to Infrastructure
• Set the 'WLAN security mode' to WPA/WPA2
• Select 'WLAN security settings' to open the next menu

• Set 'WPA/WPA2' to EAP .Set the 'WPA2 only mode' to off

• Select 'EAP plug-in settings' to open the next menu
• Using the 'Options' menu, disable all the EAP types except EAP-TTLS (so that only EAP-TTLS has a tick next to it.Select 'EAP-TTLS'

• open the 'Options' menu, and choose 'Configure'
• In the 'EAP-TTLS' screen, on the 'General' tab:
• Leave 'User or Personal certificate' as not defined
• Select 'CA certificate', and choose AddTrust Global Root (it was at this point that I found out that I did not have the AddTrust Global Root certificate, if this is the case with your phone you will have to download the certificate from the link given at the bottom of this post or here and here and add it to your list of certificates)
• Set 'User name in use' to User-configured or user defined

• Set 'User name' to to your username in the following format: yourname@abcd.ac.uk or yourname@admin.abcd.ac.uk (replace abcd with your university's address)
• Set 'Realm in use' to User-configured or User defined
• Leave 'Realm' blank

• Change to the 'EAP' tab, by moving right
• In the 'EAP-TTLS' screen, on the 'EAP' tab:
• Using the 'Options' menu, disable all the EAP inner types except MSCHAPv2 (so that only MSCHAPv2 has a tick next to it

•  Select 'MSCHAPv2', open the 'Options' menu, and choose 'Configure'
• Set 'User name' to your university username with @abcd.ac.uk appended, e.g yourname@universityname.ac.uk
• Set 'Prompt password' to No
• Set 'Password' to your normal ISS password (remember, it is case sensitive)

• Press the 'Back' button
• In the 'Cipher' tab you can leave everything at the default settings

• Now press the 'Back' button as many times as is needed to return to the main menu
• Open up the 'Web' browser application, and try to visit a web page such as google.com
• When prompted to 'Select access point', choose eduroam from the list. The device should connect, and then the web page should load!

Download the certificate file in .cer format from here and in .crt format from here these links will take you to my skydrive and you can download using the download button on the right. Alternatively you can download the .cer file from fileden here

you can use your computer or phone to download the files. If you are using your computer you will have to transfer the files from the computer to the phone memory and click/open the file to load it to the list of certificates.

The screenshots were from my Nokia e63 phone, I hope you are able to connect now, if you are still  having problems, you can list the details of the connection problems you are having in the comments section  below and I will try to work out a solution.

My next effort is to connect the kindle to the eduroam network :)

How to crimp an RJ45 network connector

Although wired networks are fast becoming obsolete, with the proliferation of wifi routers and modems having built in wifi routing capability, there are still many situations where a wired network still makes sense, especially if you are concerned about hackers snooping on your network or if you just want a plain old wired network. So if you are setting up a network at home one of the important parts of your network would consist of that small nondescript component connected to a wire known as an RJ45 connector. Connecting the connector to the CAT5 or CAT6 cable is quite simple once you get the hang of it, but you have to keep in mind the sequence of colour code, I am going to highlight the basic – straight and crossover - crimping method and colour code here. This is a topic that has been covered in many sites, I just want to include the basic pictorial info without too much technical jargon.

You can buy pre crimped network cables, but you won’t get the exact length that you may want. If you want to crimp your own or if you just want to know how it should be done, read on.

You will need:

1). A pair of RJ45 crimpers, don’t buy the cheap ones unless you plan to use them only once or twice, get a good quality pair and you won’t regret the small investment.

Crimping tool for RJ45 (network) and RJ11 (telephone) connectors


2). RJ45 connectors


A pair of RJ45 Connectors

3). CAT5 (or CAT5E or CAT6) Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable (the length will depend on how far away is the network hub from your workstation)

Cut the wire to the desired length then strip off about half an inch to expose the twisted pairs of wire there should be four twisted pairs making a total of eight different colours of wire. Do not strip off too much of the wire

After you have done this, untwist the half inch exposed pairs, flatten them and cut them with a wire cutter so that they are even at the edges.

Do not expose too much of the wire, this will result in data transmission problems, the picture below shows you how it should NOT be done



DO NOT make this mistake



For straight crimping, i.e., if you want to connect a desktop or a laptop to a network hub port, you will have to follow the 568B standard or more technically TIA/EIA-568-B standard. On both the ends of the cable the crimping has to follow the same colour code

568B Colour Code

For crossover crimping,

i.e., if you want to connect one computer with another

or link one hub with another hub

or link an adsl modem to a network hub, you will have to adopt the 568A or TIA/EIA-568-A standard on one end and the 568B or TIA/EIA-568-B standard on the other, so the ends of your wire should be connected like this



568-A to 568-B Crossover crimping



This is the pin position on the RJ45 connector

This is how the end product should roughly look like 

I hope this helps you with your network!