Has anyone encountered anything like the following?
Start out with a netgear ADSL wireless router, new laptop, XP up to date, and coming into the admin interface of the router through a wired ethernet connection on another computer.
Plug in, and the wireless network is recognised immediately. However there is no authentication or security, and it is recommended to change the SSID. I change it, and reboot the device. The old SSID is now shown in XP, along with the new name as a second network. In the admin interface for the router, at the top level, the new name is shown. Further down in the stack, the old name is shown - there are two menus, one where you change the SSID, the other where you allow or don't allow multiple SSIDs. It is in the second one that the old SSID shows up.
Delete the old network in XP, and try to use the new one. Can't. Delete all of them in both machines, create a new one on the device. Now no network is visible, though the admin interface says its there, and the wlan light is on.
Decide to try creating a new one, on the device. The old one, now supposedly deleted, now appears and can be connected to. What is going on, asks my friend?
I spent a couple of hours on this in increasing embarassment, and not understanding at all what was happening. How could it be that networks which the router thought were there should not be visible from XP, and vice versa? Why did rebooting the device not seem to work as you'd expect?
The devices by the way were on the same table top, so signal strength wasn't an issue.
Was I missing something blindingly obvious? Thought wireless Linux was difficult, but its nothing compared to this!
Peter
On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 17:03 +0000, Peter wrote:
Plug in, and the wireless network is recognised immediately. However there is no authentication or security, and it is recommended to change the SSID. I change it, and reboot the device. The old SSID is now shown in XP, along with the new name as a second network. In the admin interface for the router, at the top level, the new name is shown. Further down in the stack, the old name is shown - there are two menus, one where you change the SSID, the other where you allow or don't allow multiple SSIDs. It is in the second one that the old SSID shows up.
Hmm that is strange and not something I have previously noticed on the many Netgear routers I have dealt with...Is this a DG834 variant ?
I spent a couple of hours on this in increasing embarassment, and not understanding at all what was happening. How could it be that networks which the router thought were there should not be visible from XP, and vice versa? Why did rebooting the device not seem to work as you'd expect?
One thing with the netgear's is that settings are not persistent until you click the apply button on the bottom of that particular settings page...This has caught me out before when for example I have set up the ADSL bit, then clicked across to the Wireless configuration bit (without first hitting the "apply" at the bottom of the ADSL page) when the router is rebooted only the Wireless settings will have been saved.
The devices by the way were on the same table top, so signal strength wasn't an issue.
Was I missing something blindingly obvious? Thought wireless Linux was difficult, but its nothing compared to this!
You don't mention but are you using XP's built in Wireless tools or third party ones from the wireless card ? In my experience the 3rd party management stuff can be rather buggy (it's really fun for example using the intel proset with Windows domains...Wireless settings are per user, so you cannot log into a wireless connected machine as a new domain user, without first connecting it via cable and setting up the wireless connection)
That said the built in wireless tools in XP pre SP1 were also pretty awful
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Peter -
Wayne Stallwood