How to configure wireless network card

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>
>>> Your posting led me to try NetworkManager again,
>>> but my experience was no better than before:
>>> starting NM has the immediate effect of stopping my WiFi connection,
>>> which until then was working perfectly ...
> ...
>>> The card is a Lucent Technologies Gold PCMCIA card (11b),
>>> with, according to /var/log/dmesg,
>>> "Firmware determined as Lucent/Agere 6.04".
>>
>> Mine's Lucent/Agere 8.10.  Other than that, don't know what to say.
>
> Thanks.
> I think I have a card with v8.10 firmware - I'll try that.
>
> I still consider there is something fundamentally wrong
> with the approach of NM.
> If a WiFi device is working perfectly without NM,
> then it should work with NM, IMHO.
> It's absurd for NM to complain about the device if it doesn't.
> (Recall that NM says "card took too much time scanning.  Get a better one".)

NM is more than just a connection profile manager (system-config-network 
can do that part, more or less).  It also wants to support seamless 
roaming and other features to make dynamic connections transparent. Browse 
the NM mailing list to see discussions about complexities of getting 
reliable, dynamic connectivity over wireless.  Timing and signal quality 
issues abound and support for the scanning NM needs to do is highly 
variable across cards and drivers.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs