[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Can Anyone Explain the over-all view of Wireless Networking?



Kent West:
> Jochen Schulz wrote:
>> 
>> /etc/network/interfaces contains the configuration of all your network
>> devices.
> 
> Well, that's what I thought, except a couple of people on this thread
> told me to remove my wireless from this file and use wicd or
> NetworkManager, so it's not always true;

I don't really know these tools, so I cannot comment on that. If they
work for you and you can live with them - fine! I only tried both of
them for a very short time to find out they couldn't do what I
needed/wanted them to do.

> and there's this warning when I
> run /etc/init.d/networking restart:
>> Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may
>> not enable again some interfaces ... (warning).
> That's the sort of thing that confuses me.

Never seen this, but it rings a bell. Does running the script with
'stop' and 'start' give this warning, too?

>> Wpa-supplicant is a special tool for configuring wireless encryption
>> settings. Additionally, it can use virtual device names from the
>> `interfaces` file so that a specific network card can use different
>> configurations depending on the available networks. As I understand it,
>> your computer is stationary and doesn't use wireless encryption, so you
>> can ignore wpa-supplicant as well.
> 
> Now that starts getting confusing.

True, but it works great here. :)

>> After "Access Point" there should be a hexa-decimal string just like in
>> my example. If this looks fine but DHCP still doesn't work, I am
>> temporarily out of ideas. :)
>>   
> 
> Ah, a clue!
-- snip
> So, how do I associate an Access Point?

Usually, wireless cards do that by themselves when you set the SSID. My
experience with different wireless cards is that they sometimes need a
slight kick in the butt in order to restart scanning. Running 'iwconfig
wlan0 mode managed' or 'iwconfig wlan0 essid any && iwconfig wlan0
ACUwireless' usually does the trick. Another option is to remove the
module and load it again. However, that shouldn't be needed after a
fresh boot.

J.
-- 
I wish I was gay.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
                 <http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: