Configuring N95 WLAN for NUS Wireless

The N95, N95 8GB and probably other similar Symbian phones work great connecting to the wireless network in NUS. If you want security and avoid the fuss with login through a captive web-portal, configure your device to join the NUS SSID wireless network. It’s more complicated to setup, but you only need to do it once. (Note that I now have a specific guide for the Nokia N97.)

1. Go to Menu, Tools, Settings, Connections, Access Points.
2. Click Options, New Access Point.
3. Enter a descriptive name (e.g. “NUS”) for the Connection name.
4. Set Data bearer to “Wireless LAN”.
5. Set the WLAN netw. name to “NUS”.
6. Set Network status to “Hidden”.
7. Set WLAN netw. mode to “Infrastructure” (already the default).
8. Change WLAN security mode to “802.1x”.
9. Click on WLAN security settings. You will go to a new page.
10. Set WPA/WPA2 to “EAP” (already the default).
11. Click on EAP plug-in settings. You will go to a new page.
12. Ensure that only EAP-PEAP is selected. Select the EAP types, click on Options, then Enable (for EAP-PEAP) and Disable (all others).
13. Then click on EAP-PEAP. New page again.
14. Personal certificate can be left as Not defined.
15. Authority certificate must be set to Thawte Premium Server.
16. Change User name in use to User defined.
17. Type your NUSNET domain\userid (e.g. nusstf\comabc) into the User name field.
18. Change Realm in use to User defined.
19. Leave Realm blank.
20. For the next 3 options, Allow PEAPv0 should be Yes, and No for Allow PEAPv1 and Allow PEAPv2.
21. Press your right arrow (to move to the EAPs tab).
22. Only EAP-MSCHAPv2 should be enabled (check mark beside the EAP type). By default EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA is enabled. Highlight the EAP type, click Options, then click Enable (for EAP-MSCHAPv2) or Disable (all others).
23. Click on the EAP-MSCHAPv2 type. New page again.
24. For User name, enter your NUSNET domain\userid.
25. Change Prompt password to No.
26. Enter your password in the Password field.
27. Click back, enough times to get out of the configuration.

Finally, you should be done with the configuration.

To test, launch your phone’s web browser. When asked to select access point, find the NUS entry in the list and click on it. If you had followed the instructions above to save your password, you should automatically connect to the wireless network now.

Note for other Nokia/Symbian phones: The above has been tested successfully with N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic too, although the exact UI steps vary slightly.

Note for iPhone users: The iPhone 2.0 software is supposed to support 802.1x PEAP as well. The information here might be useful to configure the iPhone. But since I don’t have an iPhone or access to one, I’ve not tried/tested.