cisco airo340, westell 327w, and ubuntu don't play nice

amp_man · 03-27-2005, 01:06 PM

I have recently gotten dsl, and the company gave me a westell 327w wireless router/modem. My laptop, a thinkpad i1300 with a cisco systems aironet340 wireless adapter, does not seem to want to connect to it. Running under windows, the two connect fine, and the wireless card connects fine to the wireless network at my school, but trying to connect to the router never gets me a connection to the internet or my network, even without any wep/wpa keys or anything. Here's the output from iwconfig (with a wep key) and ifconfig

Code:

root@noize:~ # iwconfig
eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"home"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.442 GHz  Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity=0/65535
          Retry limit:16   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:****-****-**   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/32  Signal level=-10 dBm  Noise level=-103 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:13  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:28   Missed beacon:0

wifi0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"home"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.442 GHz  Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity=0/65535
          Retry limit:16   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:****-****-**   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/32  Signal level=-10 dBm  Noise level=-103 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:13  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:28   Missed beacon:0
root@noize:~ # ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:D0:59:09:09:6C
          inet addr:192.168.1.55  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:141 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:153 errors:13 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:13
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:153760 (150.1 KiB)  TX bytes:15399 (15.0 KiB)

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:40:96:34:F3:32
          inet addr:192.168.1.57  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:59 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:59
          TX packets:12 errors:23 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:23
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:7458 (7.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:1968 (1.9 KiB)  TX bytes:1968 (1.9 KiB)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
          inet6 addr: ::127.0.0.1/96 Scope:Unknown
          UP RUNNING NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:7 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-40-96-34-F3-32-30-3A-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:2312  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:59 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:59
          TX packets:12 errors:23 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:23
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:7458 (7.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

I don't have two wireless adapters, for some reason, ubuntu (or maybe it's linux in general) detects the one wireless card twice. Also, I'm using a custom 2.6.11.5 kernel, not the stock one, but that shouldn't hurt it. I think this might be a problem with DHCP or DNS, but I really don't know much about this. Thanks for any help

ignorant_savant · 03-28-2005, 09:35 PM

I noticed that your wireless card as being both eth1 and wifi0. All network cards have a unique Hardware address. On your output for ifconfig, the same HWaddr is repeated for both. Delete one of the interfaces and make sure dhcpcd is shutdown on eth0.

amp_man · 03-28-2005, 10:31 PM

how do I go about removing this? also, I'm using dhcp-3, this is stock with ubuntu, should I change to dhcpcd? thanks

edit: also, I'm often switching back and forth between school and home, is there a good (quick) program for changing access points?

ignorant_savant · 03-28-2005, 11:44 PM

To answer your first question, I don't know. Sorry, I'm not experienced with Ubuntu, so I don't know where to find it to delete them.

There are two types of dhcp servers: dhcpd(server) and dhcpcd(client).
The dhcpcd service obtains the IP address for the computer, and usually is set for the wired or eth0 interface.
To stop it, as root type: # dhcpcd eth0 stop

For wireless: # dhcpcd wireless interface start

This should work for both school and home, unless it is encrypted. For encrypted networks, enter the key first.

amp_man · 03-29-2005, 01:58 AM

anyone else know? I've done a search and come up with nothing, and i can't seem to find any config files related to it..heck, I can't even figure out where to find the docs to figure it out!

skunkydog · 06-22-2005, 11:37 PM

I've been having the same problem with a westell 327w from verizon, ubuntu 2.6.10-5 with an ralink rt2500 card. I have to broadcast the SSID and disable WEP for it to work. I can still use MAC filtering but I feel so naked. Does anyone have a similar config (2 out of 3: ubuntu, 327w, and rt2500)? amp_man, is the wireless network at your school broadcasting the SSID or using encryption?

amp_man · 06-24-2005, 03:22 PM

I got mine working with SSID broadcasting turned off, but I never did manage to get WEP working, I also use MAC filtering as a "next best thing". The only thing is that I have to manually tell it which network to connect to when it connects, it can no longer pick up that it's in my network's range...but oh well.

VibeOfOurTribe · 07-30-2006, 07:43 PM

I was having the same problem. Fixed it by switching the router's wireless security settings to "Shared" authentication. Not sure why the westell does this, because I have other routers that use open mode and linux works fine with them. Oh well.

If you don't know how to do this, plug a network cable in, point your browser at 192.168.1.1 the westell's default username is admin and password is password. It will ask you to change this. Then go to Configuration->Wireless->Security under "Authentication Type" change that to say "Shared".

This site explains the difference between shared and open authentication
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk72...805e8297.shtml

hope that helps some frustrated people out,
Matthew

amp_man · 07-31-2006, 05:58 AM

Well, the laptop that had that card went in the dumpster the end of last year, and WEP works fine with my new laptop, under dapper. I sorted out some of the oddities; the wireless being eth1 and wifi0 was directly related to the card and cisco drivers, and is the "normal" behavior of that driver. Also, I moved into another house, and for whatever reason, the card worked perfectly with WEP on a different Westell 327w (perhaps it was set up as shared, I didn't mess with it much).

Anyways, this thread's over a year old, I think it's time to let it die.