[ale] WRT54G2 wifi router troubles

[Charles Shapiro]

Hey Richard.

Yeah, I could see the SSID on her Dell, and on my Ubuntu laptop.  The
dell just indicated "Authenticating" indefinitely.  My laptop was
indefinitely trying to establish a DHCP connection -- the syslog
didn't give me too many hints about authorization. As I mentioned, the
Nokia N810 ( running Maemo ) saw the AP and connected without a hitch.
 To me the interesting part was that undoing and redoing the auth
seemed to fix the trouble.

BTW I tried to change the handedness of the mouse on the Dell Netbook
through the GUI but it didn't actually change anything.  I dunno
anything about the version of winders on it.

Now that I think hard on it, the only thing I might do different is to
set the IP connection between the dsl modem and the wifi router to be
static rather than use DHCP.  I did this on my own network when I
discovered that I had to turn my dsl modem on before my firewall in
order to connect. Perhaps that's the trouble that the MCSE goof is
really trying to fix.

-- CHS


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Richard Faulkner <rfaulkner at 34thprs.org> wrote:
> Hi Charles --
>
> Been falling behind in this interesting thread but finally got caught-up
> this AM.
>
> Yes.  You did the right thing.  (And YES a very interesting point in how her
> machine finally connected).
>
> Your resolution has my curiosity for future reference as well.
>
> Was her wireless card enabled when she was trying to connect originally?
> Was she broadcasting her SSID?  What is the OS?  If Windows was it
> up-to-date (service pack)?  That's kinda the order that I would start in...
>
> I had a local shop that I do contract work for present me with an Acer
> netbook that was claimed as not being able to connect to the user's WAP.
> The OS was 9.10 and they (the shop and user) were not familiar with it.  I
> took a "look" and it connected straight away for me.  No issues.  I'm no
> genius but in this case had more to do with knowing the clicks to get the
> job done.  In this case, nothing was broken...and I'd guess that the gal (in
> my case) was not broadcasting her SSID and didn't know what it was in the
> first place.  (Trying to connect to the wrong network or something?)  As far
> as I can tell the issue in my case was good ole' user error.
>
> Your case sounded more of a s/w related issue in the laptop understanding
> "who" it was suppose to talk to.  That or the wireless IF was not enabled
> when all of this started?  Dunno.  Once you did get an open connection to
> the WAP it became aware of it and remembered the connection (assuming that
> you manually input the SSID).  iPod's Touch (my eldest son has one) seem to
> work this way when connecting to non-broadcast SSID's.  Connect once and
> they will "remember" the SSID for one more connection.  After that you have
> to manually key them in again.
>
> But then, if you're already weary of this one please let it do a fly-by.
> I'm with you...an interesting resolution.    ---R
>
> PS>  Are you going to Linuxfest again on the 24th?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us>
> Reply-to: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux! <ale at ale.org>
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux! <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] WRT54G2 wifi router troubles
> Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2010 23:13:11 -0400
>
> On Thu, 2010-04-08 at 18:45 -0400, Brian Pitts wrote:
>> I'm in favor of the "pass-through mode" recommendation, but only if
>> the
>> equipment in maintained by a technically savvy user. In this
>> situation,
>> I agree with Jim's comment above. Still, I doubt the list would have
>> dumped on the suggestion so hard if the source hadn't been identified
>> as
>> an MCSE.
>
> I don't know about that.  It is one of those things that you don't do
> unless you need to.  That is, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  Of
> course, non-end-to-end connectivity is what I would consider broken, but
> it's not really fixable for most people until IPv6 is rolled out.  I
> imagine that there will be a decent reduction in 'net traffic since a
> lot of NAT traversal mechanisms will no longer be necessary then.  Of
> course, that also means that there will be a fair lot of services that
> will also no longer be needed on the 'net, since their sole purpose in
> life is to get around NATs.
>
> 	--- Mike
>
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