wireless networking with Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy

I am running Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy on my IBM Thinkpad T40p laptop. I have an Atheros AR5212 a.b.g wireless card and use WPA-PSK with TKIP security on my Linksys WRT54GL router. I HAVE managed to get the wireless connection working by using the info in this howto: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WPAHowTo but it all had to be manually configured.

I installed NetworkManager Applet 0.6.3 as the howto suggests but it only detected my wired NIC - I had no way to switch to the wireless card to configure it. Ubuntu also had Network Monitor 2.12.0 installed originally, but it only gives eth0 and lo as connection options. So, now I have both applets running when I start up and neither one can detect my wireless network.

To get it to work, I had to create and configure the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file, tested the configuration with "sudo wpa_supplicant -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dmadwifi -w", which gave a couple of errors, but connected nonetheless, then followed the "final installation (Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy)" instructions to get it to run on startup.

So, my question is why don't the GUI applets detect my wireless connection? How can I get them to so I can switch between locations easier? Which one should I use (assuming that I shouldn't have both running) and how do I get the other one to quit starting at startup?

Hi,

NetworkManager is very good - if you can get it working. Check this guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...NetworkManager

Take particular note of the section under "Configuring Devices" where you have to disable any devices in /etc/network/interfaces that you want NetworkManager to use.

Cheers, Dave.

thanks for the link. That got network manager working and I can switch wireless networks and automatically go to the wired one, but I have a couple more questions:

1) I had to turn on SSID broadcasting to get it to work... I switched to disable broadcast and it disconnected me. I tried typing the ssid in manually and it will not connect. Any ideas? Right now I am just broadcasting, but I don't really want to leave it that way.

2) For some reason with this configuration, my signal strength is horrible. When I am right next to the wireless hub, my strength is only about 65% when I move to the next room it falls to 35-40%. It was strong when it was manually configured. Is it just the meter is wrong? It might be mental, but I swear it seems laggy-er...

My signal strength dropped when I moved over from unencrypted wireless to WPA-TKIP. Mines manually configured at the moment though and its still bad - I blame the encryption.

I don't think it is the encryption itself. When I had it manually configured it wasn't like this. Also when I go to Windows it isn't like this. It is probably a setting or bug in the software of some sort.

no one knows about the SSID broadcasting? The signal strength sounds like a driver issue I guess. Should my driver appear as ath_pci or madwifi?