comp.os.linux.networking

Thomas Richter writes:

> Thomas Richter wrote:
>
>> The following however, does allow me to connect: ("A bad hack")
>> a) First configure the channel manually. (iwconfig eth1 channel xx)
>> to the strongest access point (why doesn't pick it the best channel
>> in first place?). All access points have the same essid, but use
>> different channels and provide varying quality, dependent on the
>> room where they are mounted.
>> b) Set the mode to "ad-hoc" (even though the access points are run
>> in the managed mode). I've no idea why this step is a good thing to
>> do, or why it works at all, but it doesn't go without it, no chance.
>> c) Try to connect to the access point again.
>> This will give me fine access, i.e. DHCP and so on works great.
>
> Update to this: I'm now in a different hotel (again), and it's exactly
> the same mess. This is not an isolated problem (and it's a different
> brand of broadband access, and a different hotel chain).
>
> So long,
> Thomas

Sometimes, I get into the same trouble. At my faculty, there's a
wireless network everywhere in the campus, with internet connection. But
in some parts of the campus, I have to wait minutes before having any
internet access. I've experienced this in two places. In one it was just
once, but in the other, it happens every time I try to connect to the
internet there. Eventually, it will get connected. Probably it will get
disconnected a few seconds or minutes later.

I've never been able to fix this issue, but I've done no debug on this.

It's a laptop running Gentoo GNU/Linux, and it's configured to use
wpa_supplicant. Wireless is provided by an Atheros chipset based PCMCIA
card. (Which involves some piece of proprietary binary code tainting the
kernel, so I'd also consider blaming that piece in my case.)

Never tested it with a Redmond OS, as my laptop doesn't run one.

If someday I get into one of those places again, I'll try to do those
steps (just adding the part which is needed to use wpa) to see if it
fixes the issue.

--
Nuno J. Silva (aka njsg)
LEIC student at Instituto Superior Técnico
Lisbon, Portugal
Homepage: http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/
Gopherspace: gopher://sdf-eu.org/11/users/njsg
Registered Linux User #402207 - http://counter.li.org

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