Setting up Linux for wifi is usually more complicated than in Windows or OS X. Two pieces of software must normally be installed: A driver for the network card and the so-called wpa_supplicant.

Drivers

If you have an Intel b/g or a/b/g card then you can try to use the driver ipw2200 with the latest firmware from http://ipw2200.sf.net/.

Otherwise it is best to use a wrapper that allows you to use the Windows driver of your netwkork card in Linux. This program is called ndiswrapper and is available from http://ndiswrapper.sf.net/.

The native Linux drivers madwifi and ra2500 are capable of WPA but they are not tested by us.

wpa_supplicant

To work with WPA, additional software is required (except if you are using the ra2500 driver). This software is included in most Linux distributions and comes as one or two packages named like wpa_supplicant (and wpa_supplicant_gui).

After installing them (at least the base rpm), edit the file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to look like this:

network={
        ssid="ictp-secure"                            #network
        scan_ssid=1                                   #Enable SSID scanning
        mode=0                                        #Infrastructure mode
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP IEEE8021X NONE               #authentication protocol
        pairwise=TKIP                                 #Encryption modes
        #pairwise=TKIP CCMP                           #Encryption modes (alternative)
        group=TKIP                                    #Encryption
        #group=TKIP CCMP                              #Encryption (alternative)
        eap=PEAP TTLS                                 #PEAP or TTLS permitted
        identity="your_username"                      #user's login
        password="your_password"                      #user's password
        #phase1="peaplabel=0 include_tls_length=1"    #PEAP options
        phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"                        #Force MSCHAPV2
        proto=WPA                                     #Force WPA or WPA2
}
# -- For some network cards e.g. RTL 8081 based with ndiswrapper it is
# necessary to set
#   proto=WPA
# For ipw2200 set the following directive in /etc/modprobe.conf and/or /etc/modules.conf
#   ipw2200 options hwcrypto=0

If you have wpa_supplicant version 0.4.4 and above, you can also leave out the identity and password lines and then run the wpa_gui software whenever you wish to connect. Note wpa_gui will ask for your identity (username) and password. You may then need to restart the network or dhcp client.