multiple access points & dhcpcd

yakapiece · Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: multiple access points & dhcpcd

I need a little bit of help (or maybe a lot)

I have an IBM x31 notebook, I replaced the miniPCI card a year and 1/2 ago from the Intel based to an Atheros Chipset. Specifically a Philips Component card. It works great at home, work, basically networks that have few access points, however, at my school they have at anytime 10-25 access points available ALL over campus. Many of them when I 'iwlist ath0 scan' are on the same channel with different MAC addr and all of them are Cisco brand. The problem I have is when I dhcpcd eventually it times out on its own, it will not choose one access point and associate. I watch it hop different freqs but won't stop and associate.

Maybe someone has some suggestions or can tell me how I log dhcpcd. I have logged using ethereal and watched my wireless interface broadcast but as far as I can tell there is no response (atleast in time). When connected I can roam between access points, it just will not associate with one.

Even when I set a channel, many times it will not associate. I also use just the madwifi drivers and wireless tools, nothing more, nothing less.

I hope someone can help me, its driving me crazy. Every now and then it does associate, and yes I do have the weak WEP key correct.

Thanks

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

I'm seeing this exact behavior on a Dell X1 with ipw2200 card. Mysterious indeed.

yakapiece · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:15 pm Post subject:

Could anyone tell me how to make dhcpcd log or be verbose? The man pages said nothing of it. Even if I could see the activity of my wireless card, attempts to associates, etc... something. Maybe no one here can offer suggestions I might post on the school's newsgroups.

It would be really nice to have a client to manage my wireless connection, for it to switch between strongest access points... I know of the gentoo wireless scripts....

m_sqrd · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 367

What version of dhcpcd are you using
normaly -d will log to syslog but you need to configure your loger first

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

I'm not running a logger on my laptop. Setting -d on dhcpcd should then send output to stdout/err. I get almost nothing however. (One line at startup, then nothing.)

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

I also get the same behavior using pump, so my guess is that the wireless stuff in baselayout is broken.

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

Filed a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103722

yakapiece · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject:

I'm not certain this is a bug. I'd like to think so, but I believe Windows and OS-X probe constantly for the most powerful access point with the essid X and connect to that. In this case, I have anywhere between 10-25 access points on channels 1,6,11 - doing the math sometimes there are 3-4 with different MAC addrs but on the same channel with the same SSID and enc.

I'm at home now but maybe tomorrow while I'm at school I can play with the dhcpcd logging feature.

yakapiece · Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:24 pm Post subject:

I just compiled sys-apps/baselayout-1.11.13-r1 - hadn't updated world for a while - I still think we need to give more data to show its a bug rather than fluke.

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

This is absolutely nuts. I'm back home and sitting 10cm from my ap and cannot associate. Scanning shows 3-4 wireless networks available. I cannot force the card to associate to my network, even using manual iwconfig commands. I was scanning networks and noticed that the other aps faded out for a moment so that only my ap was visible. At that moment my card associated. A few minutes later I lost the signal and scanning showed again multiple aps visible.

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

Just happened again. The gnome icon showed my card associated. Scanning showed only my ap visible. Dhcpcd worked fine .

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

OK. I think I've narrowed it down to multiple aps on the same channel. Can someone verify? Whether this is a bug is matter of opinion. In the last few weeks, I've sat next to lots of people with wintel/mac laptops happily connected when I could not. If multiple aps on the same channel is indeed the problem, how do other OS' manage to associate? Can they filter packets from other aps on the same channel?

UberLord · Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 7:24 am Post subject:

Try using wpa_supplicant if you can as it's much better at playing the access point association game
_________________
Use dhcpcd for all your automated network configuration needs
Use dhcpcd-ui (GTK+/Qt) as your System Tray Network tool

yakapiece · Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestion Uberlord,
This week so far (2 days) I haven't had a problem. Connection has been perfect. But I will setup the script you suggested.

prometheanfire · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 4:40 am Post subject:

I am trying to connect to my schools wireless network (it has multiple aps about 10) that broadcast the same essid
this is the code for wpa_supplicant that I use.

prometheanfire · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject:

I think I know what I forgot (the essids are hidden)

but what do I do about the multiple access points on the same channel.