WiFi Association Issues on Chromebook

alzhao · 2019-11-25T09:05:31.045Z

Finally we had chance to find a chromebook and test. Thanks to Hong Kong’s peaceful days.

Surprisingly we can connect to MT300N-V2 without problem.

We asked a friend to test in the US. She cannot connect to MT300N-V2 with firmware v3.012. But after she upgrade to v3.025 she can connect without problem.

Google Chromebook 78.0.3904.92
Intel 7256 （Rev b9）

czsmith · 2019-11-25T22:05:24.200Z

Alas, not all chromebooks show that problem… Here’s a list posted from before:

Acer C732 Chromebook
HP Chromebook model 14-da0011dx
Lenovo Yoga C630
Acer Chromebook model cp315-1h-p8qy
Dell Chromebook model c3181

I appreciate the effort… maybe someone will come by with a chromebook that is affected.

Quite a few chromebooks I tested did work. I have to presume that it’s the driver that comes with the particular chip set on the motherboard.

Sadly, I have no way to find out which chip is in the machine from the mac address (e.g. 68:EC"C5:24:59:0a).

tchamber236 · 2019-11-26T04:00:07.216Z

I have this issue as well, and while I don’t understand the dialog going on, I thought it might be helpful to mention that for me, this issue started when I upgraded the firmware to version 3. I used this router with my Chromebook for a long time with version 2, which I think is what it came to me with, and never had a problem. But as soon as I upgraded to version 3, it quit working. (The router works fine with devices other than my Chromebook.)

You can see the problem in the wifi connection in the Chromebook setup. There is a setting called “Proxy–Connection type”, which is ordinarily set to “Direct internet connection” and is greyed out so you can’t change it. That’s what it is for any other router, and what I think it used to be for the GL.inet router with the version 2 firmware. But in version 3, it’s a dropdown list, which I think means the router is not identifying itself to the Chromebook correctly. Sorry, I know that’s not much of a description but I’m not technical.

Hope that helps. I bought the router primarily to use the Chromebook with unsecured networks, and it worked fine for a long time, so I was disappointed when the firmware upgrade broke it.

alzhao · 2019-11-26T06:16:12.815Z

Is it firmware v3.025 you are trying?

tchamber236 · 2019-11-26T15:43:41.494Z

The firmware on mine is 3.024, and it isn’t showing any updates available.

Mine is a different router from the one here: a GL-AR300M-337. But as my problem is the same I thought it might shed light on what is happening.

I’ve been through resets, etc., but as the router (in WISP mode, haven’t tried any of the others) works with devices other than a Chromebook without problem, I concluded the problem is specific to Chromebooks.

Thanks.

sfx2000 · 2019-11-27T06:27:47.540Z

czsmith:

Quite a few chromebooks I tested did work. I have to presume that it’s the driver that comes with the particular chip set on the motherboard.

Probably would take some research to see what wifi chipsets are on the ChromeBook.

I’ve got two on hand -

Lenovo N22-Touch - Intel N3160 with Intel 7265
HP Chrombook 14a - AMD A4-9120C with QCA 6174A (ath10k wave 2)

To determine which wireless card your Chromebook uses, open a browser and do the following:

In the URL field (Google calls this the “Omnibox”), enter chrome://system .
Scroll down to the section labeled “lspci”. Click the Expand… button.
In the list that appears, look for the line with the words “Network Controller” (not the line that says “Ethernet Controller”; that refers to the wired network adapter). The manufacturer and chipset model number will be on the right.

czsmith · 2019-11-27T19:11:59.058Z

Glad to see some activity on this problem.

It’s a long thread, so I’ll summarize some of the highlighrts for people newly joining the discussion.

I started out writh 3.012 and upgraded to 3.025. Both showed the problem.
I would not be surprised if any version 2.x worked. The GL-iNet literature says that there’s a new driver in the v2 product (presumably in the 3.x software.) The problem is almost surely in the MT300N-v2’s driver software.
The problem is that the MT300N-v2 is NOT proceeding to start the 4-way handshake needed to enable encryption following an Association Request packet form the Chromebook. The failure to start (or complete) the handshake is causing the Chromebook to keep sending Association Requests and eventually to timeout and display an error.
The bunch of Chromebooks which worked seem to have a different wifi chipset than the ones which don’t. Thank you sfx2000 for instructions on how to identify the chipset. Alas, I’m across the country for the next month and don’t have access to the failing Chromebook. If Black Friday weren’t coming up, I’d go back to Best Buy and would look this up in one of the other failing models. (See post #37 above here.)

The Associate Request is slightly different in the models which do connect from those that do not. The difference is probably what is driving the MT300N-v2 not to start the handshake, eventually leading to a timeout.
Since these Chromebooks connect without problem to other routers (including other GL-iNet models), any correction really should come from GL-iNet and not the provider of the Chromebook driver. Regardless, I got no response when I submitted multiple problem reports to Google or Acer.
Until the tech staff gets their hands on a model which shows this problem, I understand it’ll be difficult to debug.

I would ask if GL-iNet is willing to take trace (pcap) files previously submitted and replay-them to the router. If so, we would have the ability to push Association Requests to the router without needing to have one of these Chromebook models. There are a number of tools available for this: airreplay-ng (here) or tcpreplay (here).

tchamber236 · 2019-11-27T21:22:36.895Z

I looked at mine, an old Samsung Chromebook 303C. Unfortunately, the “lspci” entry is blank, and I can’t find any indication of the network controller elsewhere.

alzhao · 2019-11-28T05:20:02.180Z

czsmith:

I would ask if GL-iNet is willing to take trace (pcap) files previously submitted and replay-them to the router. If so, we would have the ability to push Association Requests to the router without needing to have one of these Chromebook models. There are a number of tools available for this: airreplay-ng (here) or tcpreplay (here).

We will check if we can test without chromebook. @wellnw

wellnw · 2019-11-28T07:46:14.264Z

@czsmith @alzhao I will try it

czsmith · 2019-11-29T01:11:29.031Z

Great… Ordered a suitable USB wifi adapter so I can use airreplay-ng. I’ll try to get some pcap files that work and don’t work. Only have a macbook here, but I do have two mangos to play with.

sfx2000 · 2019-11-29T22:32:25.143Z

czsmith:

Ordered a suitable USB wifi adapter so I can use airreplay-ng.

If you’re on a MacBook, just use AirTool - it’s free…

Intuitibits

Airtool Pi Beta Program - Intuitibits

Airtool Pi Beta Program Airtool Pi is an iOS app for WLAN and IT professionals to do remote Wi-Fi packet captures using Linux sensors, such as the WLAN Pi, or any Linux endpoint with one or more compatible Wi-Fi adapters. Beta testing is...

Est. reading time: 5 minutes

Works well for me - still on Mojave there…

sfx2000 · 2019-11-29T22:40:42.184Z

tchamber236:

I looked at mine, an old Samsung Chromebook 303C. Unfortunately, the “lspci” entry is blank, and I can’t find any indication of the network controller elsewhere.

That’s an older chromebook - so depends on what version of ChromeOS you have…

sfx2000 · 2019-11-29T23:25:12.258Z

Anyways - @alzhao

@czsmith - his problem might be related to the KRACK mitigation on the MT76 driver…

Under LUCI - see if “Enable Key Reinstallation” is enabled or not - with ath9k it’s not enabled by default

wonder what the default here is for Mango

Starts to make sense here…

czsmith · 2019-11-30T04:32:31.581Z

I do use airtool to capture frames. But I don’t think it can replay (inject) frames that were previously captured. I’ll try Kali in a VM with a suitable usb adapter.

I want to replay a successful authenticate request and see the handshake start. Then replay the one from the chromebook which doesn’t work. If that falls, then gl-inet can do the same to tell re produce the problem.

sfx2000 · 2019-11-30T21:54:55.495Z

czsmith:

I do use airtool to capture frames. But I don’t think it can replay (inject) frames that were previously captured. I’ll try Kali in a VM with a suitable usb adapter.

Airtool only captures…

Kali should be fine - too bad I can’t loan you my ath9k-htc based Alfa, as it would be perfect for the task…

czsmith · 2019-12-01T01:48:26.152Z

My Alfa AWUS036ACH just arrived today. Got the older 2.4GHZ version back home, but time to upgrade anyway. Kali says they added native support for this model.

Now just have to figure aireplaty-ng. Never used it before. I do have pcap files I’ve posted earlier, however, for failing Association Requests. Will try against the 2 routers I have at this location.

sfx2000 · 2019-12-01T23:44:07.654Z

Hmmm… always worry a bit about the realtek 802.11ac devices - but if Kali supports it.

My Alfa AWUS036NHA definitely would get the job done for 2.4GHz…

czsmith · 2019-12-02T02:05:43.131Z

Alas, my Alfa 2.4 device is over 2,000 miles away and I didn’t want to buy another of the same.

Well, the AWUS036ACH is just great on my macbook… way more SSIDs showing than with the built-in wifi.

You may have called it right w/regard to Kali, though… While they announced support for that chipset in 2017.1 (release notes here), it wasn’t recognized and I’ve been going thru the usual forums and youtubes trying to get/build/install a working driver.

Right now, I’m doing a clean Parallels Kali installation to get rid of any stuff from earlier attempts that might be interfering. Going to start taking snapshots so I’ll always start “fresh” on a driver installation attempt.

I’m a linux noob, so a lot of experimentation is needed.

Will let you know.

czsmith · 2019-12-03T23:03:28.760Z

OK definitely not getting anywhere with this (awus036ach) adapter. Plenty of posts all pretty much giving the same instructions to install. I can see the module in lsmod, and it’s linked to the right vendor/product USB codes, but the interface never shows up in ifconfig.

Tried vmware and parallels, 2019.4. Trying to get it working under 2018.3, but not much luck there. Though I suspect there are problems with the install building a 5.x driver instead of a 4.x one.

@sfx2000 do you know of an inexpensive wifi dongle that works out of the box with Kali. Will have to live with 2.4G, 802.11b/g/n only.