Wireless Woes

[Vikram Chhatre]

This weekend I delved in the world of wireless finally.  My new Inspiron 1525 notebook arrived and so did the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router.  After several long hours on freenode/slackware/dd-wrt channels, I managed to flash the firmware on the router to dd-wrt Version 24 stable standard generic.  Also, the intel wireless card drive on my notebook has a driver built into kernel, so the module iwl4965 was already probed and running.  I am using wicd as the wireless connection manager.

The problem is, I am only rarely able to connect to the network, lets say 1 out of 10 attempts.  The client sees the network, network sees the client card, but simply wont let in.  No error messages.  I have already tried doing hard reset on the router a couple of times (30:30:30 reset).  This hasn't helped.  I should mention that my wired LAN is working just fine.  Here are more details:

Client:
---------------
Intel 4965 Card - driver iwl4965 built into kernel 2.6.24.5
wicd configuration and connection manager


Server:
---------------

Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 router
dd-wrt v24-stable-generic-standard  Firmware

Wireless Mode: AP
Wireless network mode: Mixed (both B and G)
Wirless ESSID:  crypticlineage
Channel: 7 @ 2.442 GHz
SSID broadcast:  Enabled
Sensitivity range: 2000 meters
Network configuration: Bridged

Security mode:  WPA Personal level 1
Altorithms:  TKIP+AES
WPA shared key: 63 letter hexadecimal key
Key renewal interval 3600 seconds
Authentication type: Auto

Here is the log from /var/log/wicd/wicd.log :  http://www.pastebin.ca/1213025
The tail part of the log obviously refers to the connection success. 

Here is the router log for IP connections.  I could not make much sense out of it, but perhaps you guys can.:  http://www.pastebin.ca/1213030

I am at least able to login, though inconsistently, from my slack12.1 laptop, but my roommate cannot even get the encryption key dialogue box.  He sees the network, but can't go any further than that.  Also, the  signal for him is much weaker than it is for me.  I typically get 92-100% signal.  His is much much weaker.  He gets excellent signal for other networks in our building.  His laptop is winxp.

I am pretty sure the problem is with some dd-wrt setting, but cannot pinpoint it seeing how inexperienced I am with the software.  Later today, I will test my wireless card at Starbucks and at the University, but I dont think I will have any problem there.

Thank you so much for taking time to read through all this and for any input you may have.

Greetings,
Vikram

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[D G Teed-2]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Vikram Chhatre
<crypticlineage@...> wrote:

> This weekend I delved in the world of wireless finally.  My new Inspiron
> 1525 notebook arrived and so did the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router.  After
> several long hours on freenode/slackware/dd-wrt channels, I managed to flash
> the firmware on the router to dd-wrt Version 24 stable standard generic.
> Also, the intel wireless card drive on my notebook has a driver built into
> kernel, so the module iwl4965 was already probed and running.  I am using
> wicd as the wireless connection manager.
>
> The problem is, I am only rarely able to connect to the network, lets say 1
> out of 10 attempts.  The client sees the network, network sees the client
> card, but simply wont let in.  No error messages.  I have already tried
> doing hard reset on the router a couple of times (30:30:30 reset).  This
> hasn't helped.  I should mention that my wired LAN is working just fine.

I bought a second WRT54GL for testing the firmware updates
and because this Linux based router is being discontinued.
I decided to wait for version 24 SP2 (I'm running ver 23 SP2).

There are currently three options for running with the version 24.
First release, SP1 and CVS checkout of latest.  I know of a
WEP key problem in SP1 which is said to be fixed in the CVS version,
and it might help your problem as well.  Try their forums too:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3

--Donald
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[Greg O'Brien-16]

I'm new to Linux so I don't know if the problem is the same, but in XP's
Zero Configuration Wireless, I have found you sometimes need to disable the
network authentication and if you check the connection properties they are
defaulting to key provided by Router instead of prompting you for the key.
This causes the card to sit and wait for the key until it times out.
I don't know if there is a similar problem with Linux (I have not run into
it).

Greg O'Brien

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nslug-bounces@... [mailto:nslug-bounces@...] On
> Behalf Of D G Teed
> Sent: September 28, 2008 10:02 PM
> To: Nova Scotia Linux User Group
> Subject: Re: [nSLUG] Wireless Woes
>
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Vikram Chhatre
> <crypticlineage@...> wrote:
> > This weekend I delved in the world of wireless finally.  My new Inspiron
> > 1525 notebook arrived and so did the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router.
> After
> > several long hours on freenode/slackware/dd-wrt channels, I managed to
> flash
> > the firmware on the router to dd-wrt Version 24 stable standard generic.
> > Also, the intel wireless card drive on my notebook has a driver built
> into
> > kernel, so the module iwl4965 was already probed and running.  I am
> using
> > wicd as the wireless connection manager.
> >
> > The problem is, I am only rarely able to connect to the network, lets
> say 1
> > out of 10 attempts.  The client sees the network, network sees the
> client
> > card, but simply wont let in.  No error messages.  I have already tried
> > doing hard reset on the router a couple of times (30:30:30 reset).  This
> > hasn't helped.  I should mention that my wired LAN is working just fine.
>
> I bought a second WRT54GL for testing the firmware updates
> and because this Linux based router is being discontinued.
> I decided to wait for version 24 SP2 (I'm running ver 23 SP2).
>
> There are currently three options for running with the version 24.
> First release, SP1 and CVS checkout of latest.  I know of a
> WEP key problem in SP1 which is said to be fixed in the CVS version,
> and it might help your problem as well.  Try their forums too:
>
> http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3
>
> --Donald
> _______________________________________________
> nSLUG mailing list
> nSLUG@...
> http://nslug.ns.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nslug

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