WiFi mystery

From: Timothy Murphy (tim_at_birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie)
Date: 03/26/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:59:26 +0000

I use WiFi all the time to link my laptop to my desktop,
and it works perfectly,
using a classic Orinoco 802.11b Gold PCMCIA card in my laptop.
(I have a similar card in my desktop,
in a PCMCIA=to=PCI adaptor.)

I am running Fedora-3 with kernel-2.6.11 (which I compiled).

Yesterday, as an exercise, I thought I would try
another identical Orinoco card in the desktop,
but I simply could not get it to connect.

I'm using dhcp, and I modified /etc/dhcpd.conf in the desktop
to associate a fixed IP address to the MAC address,
and re-started dhcpd on the desktop.

Whenever I replaced the original card in the laptop
it worked perfectly,
even with the incorrect MAC address in dhcpd.conf .
(I got another IP address 192.168.3.254 from those allotted.)

When I tried the same exercise (with the same machines and cards)
under Windows-2000 on my laptop I had no problems -
the connection was made at once whichever card I used,
using putty to log into my Linux desktop.

It is disappointing that WiFi is so much more complicated under Linux.
The network wizards are really a mess,
and should be looked over by someone else and simplified if possible.

Incidentally, I tried the latest NetworkManager
but this didn't work, and I was told that it could not work with my card
as the card did not support scanning,
(as shown by "iwlist eth0 scanning").
Now there is nothing in the (practically non-existent) NM documentation
to say that it will not work with certain (probably most) WiFi cards.
Not only should the user be told to test the card,
but the program itself must determine that scanning is not possible,
yet does not warn the user that he is wasting his time.

Anyway, if anyone can throw light on my conundrum -
why the laptop will connect with the card it knows well,
but not with another identical card -
I shall be very grateful. 

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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