Choosing Access Points and making the settings stick?

Hello guys,

I'm currently running two wireless access points on my network and I'm
having a problem making my Linux system on one end of my house to
connect to the AP that is the closest. It always defaults to the the AP
that I set up in the back of my home. I place it there for more coverage
and now that's my Linux systems favorite one to connect to. The machine
is a desktop (BTW) and I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to make
my machine connect to the strongest siginal by default. I'm running
Fedora Core 4 with a Buffalo 802.11b PCMCIA card that is using the
ORINOCO module. I've tried editing the /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts file to
only include the closest AP for the desktop but still no go. I must
state that my system will connect to the strongest AP, but for some
reason, it always disconnects (after some inactivity) and goes back to
the weakest one. Strange. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA

-Jason
--
Registered Linux user #339721
Visit me @ http://home.centurytel.net/jlw-tech

"Jason L. Woodruff" <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> Hello guys,
>
> I'm currently running two wireless access points on my network and I'm
> having a problem making my Linux system on one end of my house to
> connect to the AP that is the closest. It always defaults to the the
> AP that I set up in the back of my home. I place it there for more
> coverage and now that's my Linux systems favorite one to connect
> to. The machine is a desktop (BTW) and I was wondering if anyone knew
> of a way to make my machine connect to the strongest siginal by
> default. I'm running Fedora Core 4 with a Buffalo 802.11b PCMCIA card
> that is using the ORINOCO module. I've tried editing the
> /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts file to only include the closest AP for the
> desktop but still no go. I must state that my system will connect to
> the strongest AP, but for some reason, it always disconnects (after
> some inactivity) and goes back to the weakest one. Strange. Any
> suggestions would be appreciated.

You can give your access points different ESSIDs, and then set your
machine's wireless card ESSID to point to the one you want. How to do
that may vary with distribution; with Debian, you edit a file called
/etc/network/interfaces.
--
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