NUS Wireless Setup on Nexus One

I figure that anyone who uses a smartphone like the Nexus One is going to have a 3G data plan, so being able to hook onto a wireless network isn’t going to be so important. But anyhow, I thought I’d just make a small little community contribution by sharing how to configure the Nexus One phone (I suppose just about any Android 2.0/2.1 phone will work the same) to connect to the NUS wireless network in, well, NUS. But first, credit goes to the information posted in Answers@Comp. The GUI isn’t enough to get the config done.

Ok. What do you need? For folks who have not rooted your phone, you are out of luck. You will have to. As mentioned, the GUI doesn’t do what is needed. We need to get beneath the hood. So, before you go on, check that:

• Your phone is rooted.
• You have the adb tool (from the Android SDK).
• Your phone has USB Debugging turned on (under Settings, Applications, Development).
• You are comfortable with “vi”.

So here goes. It’s really quite simple. (I think the difficult part is really in the above.)

1. Connect to your phone over USB and run the adb shell (adb shell).
2. Edit the file in /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf and append the text from the block below. Put in your NUSNET userid and password in the identity and password lines. Save the file.
3. Stop and start wifi.

ap_scan=2
network={
ssid="NUS"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
eap=PEAP
auth_alg=OPEN SHARED
identity="<nusnetid>"
password="<password>"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
priority=2
}

You should be able to connect to the NUS wireless (NUS SSID) network now. This NUS SSID is encrypted so your communication can’t be easily eavesdropped by other wireless users. You have the added benefit of auto-login. (The NUSOPEN SSID requires web-based captive portal logon, and the communication is also unencrypted.)

Update: You may want to add ap_scan=2 at the start of your wpa_supplicant.conf file to connect to hidden NUS SSID.

Update: The NUSNET userid now needs to be in domain\userid format (e.g. nusstf\comabc or nusstu\a01234567) because something got seriously mucked up recently.