Subject: problems with wi Re: Good wireless card
To: None <port-i386@NetBSD.ORG>
From: MLH <MLH@goathill.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 06/08/2003 17:46:44
On 5 Jun 2003 23:44:05 GMT, MLH wrote:
> On 1 Jun 2003 18:55:00 -0500, Michael Graff wrote:
>> buhrow@lothlorien.nfbcal.org (Brian Buhrow) writes:
>> 
>>> 	I've had very good success with the Linksys WPC11 line of cards.  
>>> these work with the wi(4) driver, and use the Intersyl prism II or III
>>> chipset.  I've used the Version1, 2, 2.5 and 3 cards.
>>> the newer cards are quite good in terms of their range, the older cards
>>> less so.  
>> 
>> I've tried linksys and dlink and others, but I always end up going
>> back to the Lucent (aka Avaya aka Proxim) gold cards.
> 
> Are there any problems with PCI adaptors working with an Orinoco
> or Linksys WPC11? Would a Linksys WDT11 work for either?

First, yes - the Linksys WDT11 adaptor works with a Orinoco Silver
wireless card.

Yesterday I set up NetBSD 1.6T with the above with a college campus'
wireless network. Got it working, but there were a few problems.

1) http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/wavelan.html is out
of date. There are no -i, -p or -c options to wiconfig

2) I can't get the wi interface to automatically connect. I could
only get it to connect by manually issuing the following commands
over and over in apparently no particular sequence, until it
connected:

$ wiconfig wi0 -D
$ ifconfig wi0 media DS11
$ ifconfig wi0 nwid <campus SSID>
$ ifconfig wi0 chan 11

(seemed channel 11 was the strongest)

I set :
-------------
ifconfig_wi0="nwid <SSID> media DS11 chan 11"
dhclient=yes
-------------
in rc.conf and it didn't connect

I set ifconfig.wi to :
-------------
!/usr/sbin/wiconfig wi0 -D
!/sbin/ifconfig wi0 media DS11
!/sbin/ifconfig wi0 nwid <SSID>
!/sbin/ifconfig wi0 chan 11
-------------
and it didn't connect.

I added the following to rc.local :
-------------
/usr/sbin/wiconfig wi0 -D
/sbin/ifconfig wi0 media DS11
/sbin/ifconfig wi0 nwid <SSID>
/sbin/ifconfig wi0 chan 11
-------------
and it didn't connect.

It seemed that /usr/sbin/wiconfig wi0 -D was the best at triggering
the thing to connect, but each of the above commands at one time
or another did trigger the connection (after each, I checked with
ifconfig wi0 for an inet ip address)

On bootup, wi went through some multi-line output attempt sequence
(I forgot and I'm 200 miles away right now) that finally gave up.

How is this supposed to auto-connect? Is this indicative of a signal
strength problem? (I know, I should have saved the output of wiconfig
wi0 -D)

I will say that even with these problems, the wi/dhclient software
is pretty cool. If we could get it to auto-connect, it sure would
be nice.