Windows Only WiFi spot?
I was at a coffee shop. Connected w/Window laptop, but not W/Linux laptop.
Kwlan reported : eth0 is disconnected The radio is off The scan results window comes up empty. On the windows machine, I clicked on the wireless icon and then clicked on "View wireless conections" then clicked on "The Coffee House" and then entered the access code they gave me. I am running an old PII Latitude CPi w/Netgear MA401 PCMCIA card. This laptop is so old that it does not have wireless, MODEM, and no Ethernet port. The Windows XP laptop is identical to the Linux one. The Windows laptop is running XP and is using a Netgear MA521 802.11b PCMCIA card The Linux one runs Knoppix 5.1.1 installed on the HDD and is using a Netgear MA401 card. It does not have an Ethernet card or adapter attached. I just booted it up at home, brought up Firefox, and automatically got a connection. I have not changed any settings between the coffee house and home. At the coffee house the card was blinking, indicating that it is on, but not connected. I am not running any encryption on it either. The KWLAN icons at the bottom right of the screen were: The Green one With K under 3 green curved line was lit up. The one to the right of it, 2 blue dots w/3 blue curves over it were darkened out. Remember, the other identical laptop saw their signal, and let me connect after entering their ID number. Again, it had a Netgear PCMCIA wireless card 802.11b I am wondering why the Linux laptop did not see their signal, why Kwlan reported that the WiFi card was disconnected, when the cards blinking light indicated that it was turned on, and why this behavior at this and some other spots, but it works at most places. I have heard of some free WiFi places denying access to anything but Windows. Has anybody heard of this? |
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I have never heard of anyone denying wireless access to non-Windows platforms, and I am almost positive it isn't even technically possible. You could block a system from accessing various network services through a captive portal (or even just using proprietary software), but you couldn't stop a particular OS from authenticating against your AP, that is layer 2 connectivity, below the operating system itself.
Unless I am misunderstanding the situation, it sounds like you just need to properly setup encryption to connect to the network. The "access code" they gave you is the WEP or WPA key, which you need to configure under Linux before the card can authenticate with the network. Without the key, the machine will simply fail to connect to the network after a few seconds. |
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Very good strength |
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At coffee house KWLAN reports: eth0 is disconnected The radio is off The cards indicator light is flashing which indicates to me that the card is turned on. What does "The radio is off" mean. I take it that the card does not see their WiFi signal. I am running Knoppix 5.1.1 on the laptop HDD. KWLAN 0.5.8 (Using KDE 3.5.5) Shouldn't the card see their signal regardless of encryption being on or off? |
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Have you tried scanning from the command line to see the exact output? Something like: Code:
iwlist device scan |
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