Slow WPA authentication on x51v

[jharber15]

I have a client who recently switched from WEP to WPA authentication on their wireless network. They are complaining about slow authentication and connection after not using the handheld.

I have their connections setup through Odyssey Client for the WPA network. Their performance measurement was said to be "less than 5 seconds with WEP. With WPA, they are expreiencing a 20 second authentication period.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how this should be handled. If there is something else that I can look at on the handheld side? I'm going to ask them to run the same test with a laptop and report the results. They are several states away, so i will not be able to get to them right away.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Elrendhel]

Greetings jharber15! Welcome to the Mobilitysite Forums!

Just to clarify some aspects of WPA.

WPA itself is a much more secure Authentication method. The other choices are OPEN, SHARED, and WPA-PSK.

The Encryption itself is actually handled via either TKIP or WEP.

That is to say, WEP and WPA are not in the same category. One is Encryption, one is Authentication.

Anyways, I understand that you have set them up with a VPN client, the Funk (now Juniper Network) Odyssey Client. Is there a reason you are having them utilize WEP or WPA when they already have a VPN solution? That's a little redundant, and is most certainly causing them the extra delay in authenticating.

Additionally, while the speed of their wireless connections will remain the same (11mb/22mb/54mb, etc), their actual data transfer rate will be greatly reduced due to the increased processor-time needed to encrypt/decrypt the packets, and that is in addition to whatever processor-time the Odyssey client uses.

[Mokubai]

Well said Elrendhel!

As Elrendhel says, using Odyssey to access a pure WPA network is redundant, so long as you are only using WPA-TKIP the built in Dell WLAN client will easily handle it and probably connect faster than Odyssey.

If you are using secure-server (Radius) based authentication then you need Oddyssey, or if you are using WPA-AES then you'll somehow need to get the latest version of Oddyssey which supports that. But if you are not using either of these cases then the WLAN utility can handle it a lot quicker and more efficiently.

[jharber15]

Thanks for the replies guys. i'm going to tell them to configure via the dell Wireless client to see if the speed is a little more user friendly.

Thanks for the great answer! I'll report the results.

[Elrendhel]

We look forward to your response! Hope all goes well!