Connecting to Wireless Networks - Nevermind!

[Rick Bilonick]

Rick Bilonick wrote:

> I asked about connecting to public wireless networks before but did 
> not get much input. I am using RH 9 on a laptop. I have no problem 
> connecting to my home wireless network. I used the gui network program 
> to do the configuration. It uses wep in managed mode and dhcp. It was 
> simple to do.
>
> But connecting the same laptop to other wireless networks has never 
> worked. No matter how I try to configue using the gui interface, I 
> never get a connection, regardless of whether the network has an essid 
> and wep or not. The green led on the wireless card (D-Link 650 - prism 
> 2 chipset) always flashes (it is solid when it connects). (I have no 
> trouble connecting the laptop to wired networks in hotels.)
>
> So I have recently tried using iwconfig. I open a shell as root and 
> enter commands like:
>
> /sbin/iwconfig eth1 key off
> /sbin/iwconfig eth1 mode Managed
> /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid any
> /sbin/ifconfig eth1 up
> /sbin/dhclient eth1
>
> if I the network doesn't use wep. If the network requires an essid 
> and/or wep, I include the information and modify the above commands 
> apropriately.
>
> When I use these commands, the card connects to the network (the green 
> light stays on without blinking) and the icon on the panel shows a 
> connection. If I do a "netstat -r" I can see the gateway's IP address. 
> I can ping this IP address and my computer at home. But I can't do 
> much else. DNS doesn't work and I can't find any web pages. The web 
> browser is supposed to go to a login web page but I can never get to 
> it. My understanding was all I needed was an empty "dhclient.conf" 
> file and I would get a lease and the domain name server address. I do 
> get a lease but I don't think DNS is working. I can't ssh or telnet 
> anywhere. (Yet I can ping as described above.)
>
> I have tried this on two different wireless networks (Barnes & Noble 
> and a university library). I connect but can't do anything other than 
> ping some IP addresses. I cannot get to the login web pages or any 
> other web pages. What else do I need to do? Something else must need 
> to be configured. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Rick B.
>
I tried to connect again tonight at Barnes and Noble and was able to get 
a connection to the login web page. I think the problem was the laptop 
firewall. Once connected I dropped the firewall and then was redirected 
to the login web page. I then put the firewall back up and was able to 
continue accessing web pages. I'm not sure why, but it worked. I was 
thinking that I needed to use a "route" command (and I did play around 
with this) but I think that the dhclient command to get the lease should 
take care of the details. I'm still not sure why the gui interface to 
set up wireless networking doesn't work at all for this (even though it 
works for my home wireless connection).

The other thing I find unusual is that I could not find a single example 
on the web or in a Linux book on how to do this. I could find bits and 
pieces but not a single complete example. Surely this must be something 
people do all the time.

Rick B.