[TriLUG] Help! Wireless problems

[Matt Matthews]

On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 00:17, rasch at raschnet.com wrote:
> If your neighbor also has used the "default" ssid, then keeping this
> value not alleviate any confusion experienced by your client.  I would
> _HIGHLY_ recommend changing the SSID on your access point to something
> (anything) other than the default if only for reason of security through
> obscurity.  This may also help your wireless client distiguish between
> the wireless networks (it should).  If two coexisting wireless AP's have
> the same SSID (even if they have different WEP keys) then the client
> assumes that they both represent the same network and it's free to use
> whichever has the best signal at the time.  Thus, your client may bounce
> back and forth or simply glob onto your neighbors if it thinks the
> signal's better when in fact the two networks are entirely different.

I had said, but perhaps should have emphasized, that "default" was an
example of what I'd been seeing. (I've been way tired the past few days
from work and staying up trying to do this kind of crap at home, so I'm
not writing as clearly as I should.) The other WAPs I'm finding are all
Linksys (as opposed to my SMC) and use ESSID "linksys" as opposed to
"default". I've also used other words, nonsense ones using only
alphabetic characters that I'm positive no one else would use, as my
ESSID to no effect. The hardware is simply not talking back and forth,
despite changing ESSID on both ends (WAP and laptop wireless adaptor).
The laptop seems in the clear, since it works when I'm at Duke.

I appreciate all the help, despite this having had very little to do
with Linux the past few posts.

I will try to keep it somewhat on topic by saying that I'm not going to
stick with the Red Hat Beta (Severn) unless I can figure out how to get
power management working so I can sleep this laptop. I at least had it
working with Red Hat 9, and the apm tools (which were installed by the
beta) complain that the kernel does not contain APM support. Am I
supposed to be using ACPI or whatever the new stuff is? If so, what are
the userland tools to make it all work? Closing the lid of the laptop
just made the screen blank, but did not put the hardware to sleep.

Again, thanks fellow TriLUGgers for the help and support you've been
offering as I work through this wireless issue.

Regards,
matt