Can I restrict the access points my wirelss card uses?

My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
the alternative point.

Anthony


--
Anthony Campbell - (E-Mail Removed)
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)

Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
> the alternative point.

In Fedora, you should specify the ssid in the appropriate requester
popped by (IIRC) system-config-network-gui. This simply adds an entry

ESSID=name

in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1. If your distribution
uses the same files, you may just edit that last file and restart the
network.

--
Maurizio Loreti http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/mlo.html
Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Padova, Italy ROT13: (E-Mail Removed)

Anthony Campbell wrote:

> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
> the alternative point.

One way, is to use WEP or better. If it can't understand the data, it can't
connect.

Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
> the alternative point.

Something's wrong with your setup. If you're actually setting the
card's ESSID, and it's different from your neighbor's, you should be
locking it to your access point.

An entirely different point was brought up by another response: if
you care about only talking on your own network, and your neighbor not
listening in, you should be using WEP at a minimum (if your neighbor
wants to crack WEP, it would be easy, so it's really "at a minimum").
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
skype: jjpfeifferjr

On 2005-11-29, Maurizio Loreti <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
>> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
>> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
>> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
>> the alternative point.
>
> In Fedora, you should specify the ssid in the appropriate requester
> popped by (IIRC) system-config-network-gui. This simply adds an entry
>
> ESSID=name
>
> in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1. If your distribution
> uses the same files, you may just edit that last file and restart the
> network.
>

I'm using Debian. Essid seems to be specified in two places:
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts and /etc/network/interfaces, which is for
eth1. If I change the eth1 setting from essid "any" the card doesn't
work, but specifiying the setting in wireless.opts doesn't seem to lock
the card to the correct access point. But I'll try again.

Anthony


--
Anthony Campbell - (E-Mail Removed)
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)

On 2005-11-30, Joe Pfeiffer <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>
>> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
>> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
>> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
>> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
>> the alternative point.
>
> Something's wrong with your setup. If you're actually setting the
> card's ESSID, and it's different from your neighbor's, you should be
> locking it to your access point.
>

Still experimenting - see my previous post.

> An entirely different point was brought up by another response: if
> you care about only talking on your own network, and your neighbor not
> listening in, you should be using WEP at a minimum (if your neighbor
> wants to crack WEP, it would be easy, so it's really "at a minimum").

Yes, I know this. But I'm not actually worried about my neighbour; it's
the efficiency of my own connection for ssh that I mind (plus I don't
want to poach someone else's bandwidth).

Anthony

--
Anthony Campbell - (E-Mail Removed)
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)

Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> On 2005-11-29, Maurizio Loreti <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> > Anthony Campbell <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> >
> >> My wireless card (Cisco Aironet 340) seems to be picking up a
> >> neighbour's access point in a particular room. Is there any way to
> >> restrict it to my own router? I've tried putting the appropriate ESSID
> >> into /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opt but it does not stop the card picking up
> >> the alternative point.
> >
> > In Fedora, you should specify the ssid in the appropriate requester
> > popped by (IIRC) system-config-network-gui. This simply adds an entry
> >
> > ESSID=name
> >
> > in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1. If your distribution
> > uses the same files, you may just edit that last file and restart the
> > network.
> >
>
> I'm using Debian. Essid seems to be specified in two places:
> /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts and /etc/network/interfaces, which is for
> eth1. If I change the eth1 setting from essid "any" the card doesn't
> work, but specifiying the setting in wireless.opts doesn't seem to lock
> the card to the correct access point. But I'll try again.

I spent several days once tearing my hair out over not being able to
get my wireless card to connect to my access point, and the problem
turned out to be a letter that was capitalized in the entry on the
access point itself and not in my wireless card's ESSID setting (I
hate to post things that demonstrate I'm an idiot, but maybe it'll
help!).
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
skype: jjpfeifferjr