Wireless works too well!

[John DeCarlo]

On 11/8/05, Harry Wert <hwert at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> First the problem: Even though I issue a "iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys
> channel 6", my computer locks on to my neighbor across the street named
> "bruce". To log onto my router "linksys" I need to run wlassistant and
> select "linksys". This works fine EXCEPT, I drop my linksys connection
> randomly and resync back onto "bruce" ( he is on channel 1). At the
> moment neither "bruce" or "linksys" are using encryption until I get
> this figured out. By the way, my wireless signal from my router
> "linksys" is many time stronger than the signal I get from my neighbor
> "bruce" - for whatever value that may have for this discussion. Has
> anyone else experienced a problem such as this? I have struck out using
> the various search engines and Ubunti wiki. Any suggestions are greatly
> appreciated. Is there anyway to issue a "deny bruce" command anywhere?
>

Hello,

I disagree with the other poster that this is a generic wireless problem. I
believe this is a Ubuntu problem (maybe Debian, maybe not).

There are many programs you might have loaded that may be monitoring your
wireless connection and may be changing things for you without your
knowledge.

I don't have a perfect solution, but have some notes that may help.

1) waproamd, if installed, may be regularly looking for wireless connections
and it does seem to go alphabetically.

Your choices include uninstalling it (sudo apt-get remove waproamd), or
changing your essid to be first alphabetically (I do agree you should not
use linksys).

2) NetworkManager (apt-get install network-manager) is also trying to do
things for you automatically.

In both these cases, if you do an iwconfig, it may be changed without
telling you shortly thereafter.

One thing you can do is monitor /etc/network/interfaces - if you see essid
bruce in there, you have one of the above packages changing things against
your will. Or maybe another wireless program.

for now, I have removed waproamd and NetworkManager, and just set up each
connection by hand, until I can figure out what is going on.


--
John DeCarlo, My Views Are My Own
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