[TriLUG] Help! Wireless problems

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Wed, 2003-07-23 at 00:30, Matt Matthews wrote:
> Thanks for all the helpful replies. Here's an update, along with a new
> and better (albeit unrelated) question. :^)
> 
> > There's a new kernel that came out last month, 2.4.20-18.9, that
> > contained a TON -- thounsands of lines -- of fixes to various wireless
> > drivers and the wireless subsystem.  (Just yesterday, 2.4.20-19.9 came
> > out to fix some security issues.)  I'd strongly recommend upgrading to
> > the new kernel and see if that reduces your problems.
> 
> I tried this. I upgraded, however, to 2.4.20-19.9 (as opposed to 18.9).
> This particular kernel makes several key applications lock up or fail to
> start. Important apps would be Evolution and Mozilla, although Pan works
> just great. Any idea what's going on there? The upgrade was done through
> up2date via Red Hat's demo subscription service, no hand tweaking or
> anything. Switching back to the old kernel allows me to, for example,
> fire up Evolution and write this email.

That's odd.  I haven't upgraded any of my systems to 2.4.20-19.9  (still
using 18.9), but I will look out for those problems.  I've had nothing
but good luck with the 18.9 version.

> > Can you set the ESSID?  That's how you normally tell a card which
> > network to connect to.  Normally you don't set the access point,
> > frequency, or channel manually, it's handled for you in 'managed mode'
> > based on whichever networks it finds given the ESSID.
> 
> Setting the ESSID and channel (to avoid being on the same frequency as
> my neighbor) seems to be the suggested path. Unfortunately, my wireless
> adaptor still NEVER sees my system, only the Linksys one. Using WEP
> (assuming I'm doing it correctly) doesn't seem to help matters.

You still need to set the ESSID.  I think you're misunderstanding how
this works.  You set the ESSID on the access point to identify your
network -- give it a unique name.  Then, you set the ESSID on your
system to match that unique name.  In redhat-config-network, for
example, this is under the "Wireless Settings" tab -- change the SSID
setting from "Auto" to "Specified" and put in your name there.

Once you've put the proper network name, the SSID, in your
configuration, and restarted networking, your card will no longer
connect to your neighbor's network.  It just won't.  If it doesn't
connect successfully to your own network, then there are other
problems... but the fact that it's still connecting to your neighbors
indicates that you haven't really changed the SSID as described above. 
Run the "iwconfig" program to see all the wireless settings including
the SSID.

The channel is irrelevant... it can be the same as your neighbor's, or
different -- that makes no difference in the process of a wireless card
connecting to a wireless network.  If you want to change the channel
however (since certainly too many wireless cards on one channel could be
a problem) -- do this on the access point.  Your wireless card will then
pick up the appropriate channel.

> 
> And, here's the real kicker. Turns out that there may be THREE access
> points near me. I spoke with the neighbor and he is setting his channel
> to 11 and I'm setting mine to 1. 

Are you sure those are allowed channels in the US?  I thought the lowest
you were supposed to use was 4.  I could be wrong...not sure where to
look that up.

> However, he had trouble and got
> frustrated and just turned all his hardware off (power off, that is).
> So, I figured this was a chance to see if I could talk to my WAP without
> his in the air as well. Except that I connected to a different Linksys
> WAP! I'm so frustrated, that I've given up for the night, but I'm
> beginning to fear that my wireless has given up the ghost (over 1.5y
> old, and it's one of the "flaky" Barricades, although this is the first
> trouble I've had) and I've just been living off of a borrowed connection
> without realizing it.

That could be the case, of course that your wireless access point has
given up the ghost.  But again, your card WILL NOT continue to connect
to your neighbor's AP if you set the ESSID as I described.

--Jeremy

-- 
/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Jeremy Portzer       jeremyp at pobox.com       trilug.org/~jeremy     |
| GPG Fingerprint: 712D 77C7 AB2D 2130 989F  E135 6F9F F7BC CC1A 7B92 |
\---------------------------------------------------------------------/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/attachments/20030723/3a139827/attachment.pgp>