[ale] WiFi Hotspot Oddity

[Jason Day]

On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 04:58:48PM -0500, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Warning: Driver for device eth1 has been compiled with version 19
> of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 17.
> Some things may be broken...

I get this message on my laptop with my own WAP, but everything seems to
work perfectly.  I'm using ndiswrapper, and started getting this message
after a recent ndiswrapper upgrade.  I just assumed it was a mismatch
between ndiswrapper and the driver I was using for my wireless card.
Since everything works ok, I haven't looked into it.

> Even though I got a default router IP, I could not ping it, nor could I 
> get out to the Internet. 
> 
> This does not happen when I camp out at the Panera Bread in Gwinnett 
> Place Mall.  What is it referring to when it says "this program?"

Is this hotspot a public hotspot?  Since WEP encryption is useless, it's
a fairly common practice to use a wireless router in conjunction with a
VPN.  In that case, you could get an IP from the router, but all ports
are firewalled except the VPN port, so if you don't have VPN client
software on your laptop it won't work.

HTH,
Jason
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9