[laptop-discuss] wificonfig scan not seeing all AP

[Garrett D'Amore]

Chris wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have Atheros wifi on my laptop.
> I have installed and setup the driver and wificonfig.
>
> When I run wificonfig -i ath0 scan
> I see the neighbors un-secured Access Point but not
> my own.  Mine uses WEP and it is setup to broadcast
> the ssid.  Could the WEP be the problem?

Generally, it won't be a problem. WEP can prevent you from making a
connection (but only if you use the insecure Shared Key authentication).

Usually problems like this come from an AP that is "shrouding" its
SSID.  Make sure that it is not just set to broadcast its SSID, but that
it is configured to *respond* to broadcast inquiries.

>
> When I run ifconfig -a is see that the 10/100 nic
> has an ip address assigned but the cable is not
> connected.  Could this be a problem?

It shouldn't be related.  IP addresses are a network layer issue,
whereas SSIDs and such are a link layer concern.   (It is in fact,
perfectly reasonable to configure a wireless network without configuring
IP on it -- you could, for example, run IPX/SPX -- if you had software
to support it -- or AppleTalk, or anyone of a number of other protocols
that have support for 802.3.

You could also just run snoop (with -P, to avoid promiscuous mode, which
has other bad effects for wireless networks), to get a copy of all 802.3
encapsulated traffic.

    -- Garrett

>
> Any help would be much appreciated.
>
> Oh, I used version 0.5 of the atheros driver
> and version v0.2 of wificonfig.
> I am running Solaris 10 6//06.
>
> Thanks
>
> Chris
>
> _______________________________________________
> laptop-discuss mailing list
> laptop-discuss at opensolaris.org


-- 
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer
Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division,
General Dynamics C4 Systems
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Phone: 951 325-2134  Fax: 951 325-2191