Wireless Problems

[d.wylie at hccnet.nl]

I could not get my ath 3com a/b/g card associated until I found that the asus 500g AP has an option to 'hide' or atleast not broadcast it's ssid for extra security. However, with it enabled, i.e. ssid hidden, the ath card will not associate. With the option disabled, i.e. broadcasting the ssid by the AP, association is fine. I'll give this a shot under W2K.
Perhaps you have such an 'hidden' ssid option for the AP?

grtz,
Dylan

> Kevin,
> 
> Thanks to you and also the others who replied.  I was
> specifying the hexadecimal key correctly (my mistake
> in my post) and the key was showing up in wicontrol.
> I deleted it from the output posted.  I know 64 bit
> wep is not much protection but posting the key on a
> newsgroup is probably not that good an idea.
> 
> To test whether wep was to blame I actually disabled
> wep on the access point and tried to connect.  The
> result was exactly the same.  It seems that the card
> is failing to associate for some reason.  Any ideas
> would be welcome.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Darryl Barlow
> 
>  --- Kevin Oberman <oberman at es.net> wrote: > > Date:
> Wed, 17 Dec 2003 23:25:22 +1100 (EST)
> > > From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Darryl=20Barlow?=
> > <darrylb_au44 at yahoo.com.au>
> > > Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile at freebsd.org
> > >
> > > Sorry to post about a problem with a desktop
> > machine
> > > but I may have more luck here given the problem is
> > a
> > > cardbus one.  I have installed FreeBSD on a
> > Desktop
> > > Machine with a TI 1410 PCI Cardbus Bridge and an
> > Avaya
> > > Silver Wireless Network Card.
> > >
> > > The card connects perfectly to a D-Link Access
> > Point
> > > in Debian and even in Windows XP.  However, in
> > FreeBSD
> > > there is "no carrier" no matter what I seem to
> > try.
> > > Troubleshooting help would be much appreciated.
> > >
> > >  Device seems to come up with:
> > >
> > >  ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.4.8 netmask
> > 255.255.255.0
> > >  ssid HOME wepmode ON
> > >  wepkey 1234567890
> >
> > Exactly how are you specifying the WEP key? Is it an
> > ASCII string or a
> > hex value? If it's a hex value, it needs to be
> > entered as 0xnnnnnnn. If
> > it's an ASCII string, it is entered as a quoted
> > string, but there have
> > been many issues with interoperability of  ASCII
> > strings and it is
> > better from both an operational and security
> > perspective to use a random
> > hexadecimal numeric key. (I use /dev/random to
> > generate my WEP keys.)
> >
> > Your wicontrol output looks OK. (Please don't
> > auto-wrap pasted screen
> > output, though!) It seems to see the AP and has
> > reasonable
> > signal strength, but it fails to associate and that
> > makes me suspect the
> > WEP key. Does the output of wicontrol REALLY have
> > the key field empty?
> >
> > I certainly don't like the disk errors, either, but
> > are not likely
> > related to the network problem.
> > --
> > R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
> > Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
> > Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
> > (Berkeley Lab)
> > E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
> >
> > >  dmesg is as follows:
[snipped]