Hi. I have a NETGEAR MA401 pcmci wifi card in my laptop (running kubuntu 5.10), which I move around my home & use in different rooms. It was always able to connect to my wireless router without major problems in all the rooms.

Recently, however, when I take the laptop into the kitchen, it changes from using channel 11 (where I have my router set to) to channel 6, and connects to a different wireless router (which I presume one of my neighbors owns).

I do not want my wifi card to change to channel 6. I want it to stay on channel 11, so I can use the internet. I cannot use the other router because it has a password on it.

Why does my wifi card change channels like this? How can I tell it to stay on channel 11 and don't change?

Note: I have tried changing my router from channel 11 to other channels, but the problem remains the same.

Also note: I have tried to tell my card to manually change back to channel 11, using the iwconfig command, but it does not work:

$iwconfig eth1 channel 11
Error for wireles request "Set Frequncy"
SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.
$

Really, I just want the card to stay on the channel I tell it and not try to connect to some other access point on a different channel. Is that so much to ask?

Can anybody help me?

I believe I had to update the firmware on my old MA401 before getting rid of it for a flashy 54Mbs card before it would hold the correct channel through iwconfig. What driver are you using as well - have you tried updating it, along with whatever wrapper (ndiswrapper, madwifi, etc.)? Can't remember the link for firmware update instructions, but will see if I can dig it out at home later.