Behavioral Differences Among Cards

I have three laptops and one desktop configured to use my wireless network.
The desktop uses as D-Link PCI card; an old laptop uses a Netgear card, the
IBM T20 uses a D-Link PC card, and the machine we're going to discuss, the IBM
T30, uses an internal mini-PCI Cisco card.

All but the T30 will sense and connect to "foreign" networks with no action on
my part. For example, if my wireless network happens to be turned off, all of
them will connect to a neighbor's unsecured network. (I use it as a test
vehicle - I don't need to steal anyone's signal.)

The T30, however, is a different beast. I just spent a frustrating hour at a
coffee shop with free internet access, where in the past my T20 had
automatically connected. The T30, even after I manually added a profile with
the Cisco utility and explicitly specified the coffee house's SSID, never did
connect. I came home, deliberately turned off my network, and experimented
with my neighbor's network. Using the SSID that one of my other machines
reported (the good ol' default of Wireless), and manually adding the profile,
my T30 finally connected.

I guess what I'm asking is if there's any way to automatically glom onto a
wireless signal with this Cisco card short of carrying another laptop (or a PC
card) to be able to ascertain the network parameters. I'm not talking about
situations where WEP or WPA is in effect, of course - that's a different
story.

About the only other fact is that the T30 is Win 2000, whereas all the other
machines are XP Pro.

Any advice will be welcome.

Art

Art
Temporary usercode - to be deleted when spam starts. Use MyBrainHurts at this ISP to reach me

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 23:33:17 GMT, arthur-temp-(E-Mail Removed) (Arthur
Shapiro) wrote:

>About the only other fact is that the T30 is Win 2000, whereas all the other
>machines are XP Pro.

I have a customer with an IBM T30 running Windoze 2000 that had a
similar but not identical problem. I don't recall exactly which DLink
card he was using. He would successfully connect to his office LAN
and get a DHCP supplied IP address. However, when he went to lunch at
the local restaurant (that has wireless), he had to run:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
before his machine would dispose of the office IP addresses and pickup
a new IP address from the restaurant. It seemed to want to hold onto
the old IP address. When he goes back to the office, he has to do the
same proceedure again.

Later, we discovered that simply unplugging the wireless card, waiting
a few seconds for Windoze to complain, and then plugging it back in,
seemed to have the same effect without manually renewing the IP
address.

I realize that you said your Cisco card didn't "connect". I'm not
sure what you mean by "connect". Did it fail to associate? If you
can see the SSID of the access point, you've successfully associated.
If not, did it fail to deliver a valid IP address? Run:
Start -> Run -> cmd
ipconfig
If the IP address is 169.254.xxx.xxx, you didn't get an IP address
from the wireless router.

If you're running some kind of personal firewall (Zone Alarm, Norton
Firewall, McAfee Firelwall, etc), turn it off to see if it's getting
in the way.


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> and get a DHCP supplied IP address. However, when he went to lunch at
> the local restaurant (that has wireless), he had to run:
> ipconfig /release
> ipconfig /renew

The Orinoco has a configuration checkbox for "obtain new IP address when
connecting to this access point". Maybe that's the same.
I notice that it is very fast getting a new IP address from an SMC, and
slow with a Linksys.

>About the only other fact is that the T30 is Win 2000, whereas all the other
>machines are XP Pro.
>
>Any advice will be welcome.

See if you have this in your registry FOR w2k

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Pcmcia\Parameters

Value name: DisableIsaToPciRouting
Data type: DWORD
Value data: 0

If not add it in and restart and see if that helps.