ESSID - how does it work?

I just got a new Netgear WGT624 router. This thing has every bell and
whistle you can imagine. I set it up, with all of the security enabled,
except for MAC address lists.

The SSID is XxxxXxxx. I also got a Netgear wireless card that won't work
with an ancient laptop (the laptop doesn't support cardbus cards), so I
dug up an old SMC PCMCIA card, and magically got on the network....

iwconfig tells me that the SSID for the network card is YYYYYYYY.

I thought that if I set the ssid on the AP, only cards with the correct
SSID could connect. Obviously, this is not true.

So what is the purpose of SSID?

TIA,

--Yan

Captain Dondo wrote:
> ...
>
> So what is the purpose of SSID?

SSID identifies the WAP. If you set the SSID of the wireless client, it
will connect only to the base with the same SSID. You can configure the
client to connect to anything it can find, though, generally the
strongest compatible signal. Are you sure you're not connecting to your
neighbor's unprotected access point?

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 05:53:20 +0000, Allen Kistler wrote:

> Captain Dondo wrote:
>> ...
>>
>> So what is the purpose of SSID?
>
> SSID identifies the WAP. If you set the SSID of the wireless client, it
> will connect only to the base with the same SSID.

Well, that's what I thought... The WAP is configured with MyNameXxxx and
the old card is still configured with MyOldNameYYYY... I would have
thought that the card would not connect to the WAP.... OTOH, I remmember
having a heck of a time getting that card to pickup anything, so maybe I
removed any and all settings that might have limited its access...

> You can configure the
> client to connect to anything it can find, though, generally the
> strongest compatible signal. Are you sure you're not connecting to your
> neighbor's unprotected access point?

Not likely... The younger of my neighbors is 85, neither is into
computers... One makes walking canes, the other has garage sales of old
furniture... :-)