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Wireless has 'randomly' started failing [solved]


iphitus
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Hey,

I have a laptop with centrino wireless, using the http://ipw2100.sf.net driver. It has been working for the past year on the school network without a problem. It was working last week.

 

Now it doesnt even associate with a wireless point, I'm puzzled by this really. There's no way the school could have changed the wep key without dropping out the whole network, or at least no way I know of. I doubt they would change it now anyway -- two weeks ago over 300 new laptops were configured and inserted into the network, if they changed it now, they'd have to re add the WEP key to each of them.

Windows is currently working flawlessly, it connects without a problem, and hasnt connected to the school network since last year, the school's automated take over your computer software cant have done anything to change that -- i removed it early last year.

 

So the problem in a nutshell is that I cant connect to the network and the wireless card isnt associating with an AP. The classroom i've tested in, I have an AP 2 meters away, and it worked last week with 95-100% link quality. I havnt changed any system settings in the last week, and havnt recompiled my kernel or touched it. There might have been an arch package update but I havnt seen any.

 

The script i have been using to connect has been this.

#! /bin/bash
iwconfig eth1 mode Managed key restricted 1234567890 essid SCHOOL
dhcpcd eth1
echo Wireless Enabled

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"SCHOOL"  Nickname:"ipw2100"
         Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
         Bit Rate=0 kb/s   Tx-Power:off
         Retry:on   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
         Encryption key:1234-5678-90   Security mode:restricted
         Power Management:off
         Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
         Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

 

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm clueless!

 

iphitus

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Have you updated the dhcpd???

 

I started getting funny random errors with the latest deb dhcp and wireless.... have you tried dropping the link and regetting a lease ? Does the dhcp try and find something then still fail (this is what mine does) it finds the AP, says its offered a lease and then ignores it and keeps searching??

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i doubt it's dhcpcd, the computer needs to associate to an AP (wireless access point) to be able to connect to the network's dhcp server.

 

i might add that it's not a possibility for me to ask the school's techies -- I asked about using linux, and they werent going to give me a wep key. A friend of a friend of mine managed to get it via keylogging...

 

I'm going to compile the latest ipw2100 driver, if that fails, i'll give ndiswrapper a shot. if that all fails and nobody has any suggestions well i'll work something out.... or i could use windows.

 

iphitus

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Yeah but it gives me similar errors it fails to associate until it comes up sucessfully. If it tries to get a DHCP IP and fails it doesn't come up properly ... I only found out from using

 

ifup wlan0 and watching the output.

 

Before that I thought is was a problem with the driver...

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OK.... i ran a tool from the aircrack project which extracts key from windows, im using the correct one.

 

now......... this is what puzzles me -- im in a different classroom and the wireless works :S

 

in this one, but not others..... and those others worked last week :S

 

Ill try what you say gowator, and if i dont get anywhere ill get some info about the AP and submit a bug to ipw2100

 

iphitus

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