iwlist wlan0 scan works intermitantly?
 

I've been using 'House of Craig''s how-to to get my net-gear wg311 v2 (acx-111 chip set) going with Mandrake 10.1. Not completely successful yet, but making progress.
I'm totally confused about iwlist wlan0 scan, though -
Intermittently I get the results I expect - I see three routers, one of which is mine, in the other room, with the the correct essid (the one I set) correct MAC address and correct channel. Another has my neighbors last name for the essid, so I suspect strongly that it's his)... The signal strength looks reasonable - 46/100 (the others are in the 30/100 range). No noise.

But most of time I get "No scan results" (or something similar - sorry - doing this from memory). It's always three good cells or nothing at all.

Is there any explaination why iwlist seems so non-deterministic? Why don't I see the same results with scans done 10 seconds apart?

Lastly, I'm not succeeding, it appears, because dhclient is failing to make a connection. I can't seem to get it to provide an IP (the log file tells me that no DHCPOFFERS were received). Is it possible that I'm just not 'hearing' the router well enough to get consistant results from iwlist?

Thanks in advance for any info.
Joe

i know how you feel
 

This situation has also happend to me.

Sometimes there are as many as 6 access points from my area and then nothing.

from your scan results try checking the channel the AP's are on. if they are all on the same channel try changing yours to a completly different one.

Also the 2.4ghz is classed as the ISM band and is full of other equipment broadcasting on this frequency. For example bluetooth devices and micorwave ovens. it could be simply that at microwave oven is on between you and your AP and happens to be on when to are running scan results.


As for not getting a DHCP packet....

first be sure you can 'see' the access point using iwlist '####' scanning

be sure that you have a iwconfig script located in you /etc/sysconfig/netowork**** directory.....
conatining a minimum of your wireless cards mac address, gateway (the ip of your AP), the ESSID of your AP,

let me know if this helps, if not i will have another think.

Ah, thanks, Mr. Moses

I had already checked the channels, and I think I'm clean that way. But...
You may have something with the interference. I suspect, not microwave ovens, but the neighbors 2 teenage girls on wireless phones! They're on near-by frequencies, I understand. Town houses will do that to you.

The good news is that I actually got on-the-air last night (for the first time, too). I'm not exactly sure what's different, but another likely culprit may be the router not allowing connections to *any* one. The set-up for the router seems to both dis-allow all connections and allow only specific connections, and the meaning of 'enable'/'disable' becomes ambiguous in these circumstances. Sigh - ENGLISH!

The bad news is that I couldn't get on a second time. The log file make me think that it's simply a matter of poor antenna placement, and interference doesn't help.

I will check on the script in the /etc/sysconfig/network**** directory. Thanks for that tip.

Joe