To be honest, I haven't stumbled across anything you haven't already and personally I've been sticking to scripts I write for this. Unfortunately, wireless in Linux is one of the biggest messes out there right now and the more layers you put between yourself and the command line the more problems seem to occur.

I was having the same problem in Windows XP and found this thread looking for a solution. As hinted by a poster upthread, for me the problem was resolved by ensuring that the router broadcast and the client reception were on the same channel. On the client this wasn't done in the network profile but on the wireless card configuration, which seems like an inconvenient place to put it.

While connecting another computer I had to turn on the "ad hoc" network option on the card, but I don't know if this has any relationship to the ssid broadcast enabled/disabled as I didn't try this computer under ssid disabled.

Regrets if I've said anything stupid but the thread helped me solve my problem and thought my solution might help someone else.

Welcome to LQ!

We always welcome observations, and adding to the info out there never hurts.

Thanks.

Here's one other I noticed about this: for at least one client, once it found the network I was able to change the router's broadcast channel without the client losing the network. It was as if the two had to be in sync to find the router with ssid broadcast disabled, but once it had found the network the synchronization wasn't needed. Maybe changes in channel are broadcast by the router to connected clients, which then know to use the new channel when locating the router?

Usually, routers stay on a fixed channel and the wifi cards scan the available channels and pick the one with the strongest signal. You rarely, if ever, want your access point to be changing channels. For example, in my home network, I need to have the router fixed at channel 11. If I don't, I get TONS of interference from the 2.4 GHz phones.

You've got an interesting observation, and to be honest I've never played with changing the channel when connected. However, it is very easy to scan all channels for an access point, so I guess I'm not sure that knowing what channel an access point is using is helping any.

For me, the bottom line is that SSID broadcasting seems to help with getting the connection and since not broadcasting the SSID doesn't even provide negligible improvements in security, it simply doesn't hurt to do it.