Blackberry not connecting to wireless network

[Wesley]

For those of you on OS6 or OS7, RIM decided to ship the phones with pre-defined wireless settings and protocols to ensure that you're not going to struggle putting this thing on your corporate VPN or even your uncapped DSL at home. but for those of you who've updated your phones in the last year or so, they made a change to WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) that doesn't quite gel with some routers.

In particular, you have to be selective as to whether or not you actually want WPS connectivity. I had an issue for a while now where my parent's BB phones wouldn't connect to the network even if everything else was fine (laptops, other mobiles, my PC). I finally sat down to tackle the issue again today after speaking to a techie at RIM online and finally solved it.

After talking to the techie and learning that there were improvements to how WPS connections are handled by the phone (because he said I should connect through that way, which is total crock), I went back to learn how my Netgear router handled WPS. Its Telkom-branded so there's no way I can update the firmware, so I had to figure out another solution. Disabling any encryption (setting the system to open) automatically disables WPS and the phones could connect just fine.

I eventually found, hidden in different system menus, options for WPS on my router.



Now you'll see that I can't actually turn it off. WDS is only to connect one router to other nearby routers, serving and extending a network better than pure repeaters or boosters as the load is distributed. I instead chose to keep the existing wireless settings and to disable the PIN. WPS by default selects WPA2 with TKIP and AES as the default encryption scheme and uses that PIN to connect both devices initially, changing it to a more advanced key later. The BB phones only wanted to use WPS as I later discovered, so disabling the PIN allowed them to connect again.

So if your mobile/tablet says that it "Failed to associate to the network", which is different to "Failed to connect", it may mean that you have a WPS issue and should try to disable it together. WPS is as weak as WEP, and should only be recommended for users that aren't so savvy about technology. If you're having DLNA connection issues, this might be the cause of it as well.

[McDangerous]

I never understood why people need to connect to their ADSL at home when they have a BB. Why? Are you planning on downloading something big to your BB? If you're having connection problems or live in a remote area that doesn't get 3G, then I get it, but other than that, what's the purpose?

Thanks for the info though dude.

[Wesley]

My mom likes watching stuff on her phone when she's not at her PC, so that was the main reason. Also, Vodacom 3G is terrible here and Opera Mini doesn't use BIS anymore.