Can't connect with DHCP or Static IP
 

Hello all,

I finally got around to getting my Hawking wireless PCI card working. It uses the rt2500 drivers, and it seems to be working fine.

Kismet displays my AP. However I'm not able to connect to it by any means so far.

Here's what I've tried in my /etc/network/interfaces file:

# For static
iface eth-wifi inet static
address 192.168.1.102
netmask 255.255.255.0

# For DHCP - I either use static or DHCP - not both at the same time.
iface eth-wifi inet dhcp

# Then these settings
wireless_channel 6
pre-up ifconfig eth-wifi up
pre-up iwconfig eth-wifi essid MyESSID

Please note, I am on channel 6, and my essid is correct. My static IP is in range. I am also hooked into the (Linksys WRT54G v8) router via ethernet, so I can configure it as I test. For simplicity's sake, I have disabled encryption until I can actually connect.

When I do ifup eth-wifi, it pulls the card up but receives no DHCPOFFERs. When I use static IP, and try to ping 192.168.1.1, it says "destination host unreachable".

ifconfig and iwconfig both show the card up, and as I said, I can see networks with Kismet. Just can't connect. So this leads me to believe that the card is fine, but I'm just doing the networking part wrong.

Ideas?

Ok, update: I just got it working somehow.

I have the essid set to the AP I want to connect to

iwconfig eth-wifi essid MyESSID

But then I had to tell it to use any AP (as opposed to the one I want - weird, I know).

iwconfig eth-wifi ap any

I also told it to use managed mode:

iwconfig eth-wifi mode managed

Now when I do

iwlist eth-wifi scan

I only see my AP, and I can pull a dhcp address

dhclient eth-wifi

For the record, this Hawking card was a real cheapie at CompUSA (I think I got it for around $10 with rebates), so it seems to perform as such. But it looks to be working now. Good luck to those who run across this thread.