How to configure wireless network card

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> On Sunday 03 December 2006 17:30, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>
>>>>> The card is a Lucent Technologies Gold PCMCIA card (11b),
>>>>> with, according to /var/log/dmesg,
>>>>> "Firmware determined as Lucent/Agere 6.04".
>>>>
>>>> Mine's Lucent/Agere 8.10.  Other than that, don't know what to say.
>
> I found a card with firmware version 8.10 , so I've been trying that.
> Sadly, my experience of NM (NetworkManager)
> has if anything been even worse than before.
>
>> NM is more than just a connection profile manager (system-config-network
>> can do that part, more or less).  It also wants to support seamless
>> roaming and other features to make dynamic connections transparent. Browse
>> the NM mailing list to see discussions about complexities of getting
>> reliable, dynamic connectivity over wireless.  Timing and signal quality
>> issues abound and support for the scanning NM needs to do is highly
>> variable across cards and drivers.
>
> Yes, it seems to me it is trying to do far too much,
> and not doing anything very well.
> If as you say it is difficult to cover all cards and drivers
> maybe it is not a good idea to try.

So they do a reasonable thing when the card won't do the job--they tell 
you that it won't do the job.

I'm sorry you are having so much trouble, but I'm pretty much out of 
suggestions.  I don't use my Orinoco card much, but it's given me no 
trouble when I have.  There's something different about our hardware or 
there's something different about our configuration.  It's not the kernel 
or NM if you are running stock, updated FC6.  I'm not doing anything 
different from what's described here: 
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/nm.shtml.  In fact, I've done 
considerably less configuring than is described there.  It's for FC5 and 
it's a bit out of date, but there's some good info there.

>
> I spent this afternoon trying to use NM with two different
> remote WiFi devices, a PCI Agere/Orinoco device and a Linksys WRT54GL.
> I had zero success with both.
> According to /var/log/messages the connection failed in both cases
> because it ran out of time.
>
> Incidentally one of the devices had WEP encryption
> but NM never asked me about this
> so I don't see how it could possibly have worked.

It obviously didn't.  Mine shows my WAP in the pulldown scan menu and it 
connects and prompts me for a key.  I'm running WPA on my router, so I 
can't connect.  But when I was running WEP, I connected just fine.

My IPW2200 works a treat in most situations.

>
> There appeared to be no place for any kind of configuration,
> and the sole documentation provided with NM
> appeared to be a short README.
>
> I googed for an NM tutorial or FAQ but had no joy.

I'm pretty sure there is something out there, though I don't know hwo 
helpful it might be.  Can you search the NM mailing list archives?

>
> What is really disturbing is that Windows XP has no problem
> accessing either of these WiFi devices
> (both running on Linux machines!).
>
> WiFi under Fedora really is dreadful.
> The only thing I can say for it
> is that SuSE was even worse.
>
> Why do none of the WiFi programs
> tell you what they have found,
> eg "Connected to remote machine but encryption key required",
> which it is clear they have learned from /var/log/messages ?

NM does exactly that, but it obviously seems to have trouble making the 
connection for some reason.  You will probably get the best help there is 
from the NM list. (Not much consolation, I suppose, if you tried them 
before and couldn't get it working.)

>
> I should add that I have WiFi working perfectly,
> by editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .

You could try playing with the profile feature of system-config-network. 
It's not NM, but it would at least save you editing those scripts every 
time you changed networks.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs