Wireless network problems - Dell Inspiron 1501

[Frank Cox]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:31:52 +0100
Robert McBroom (TNWestTex) <no-reply-gw at fcp.surfsite.org> wrote:

> Sounds like system-config-network is using eth? while the wireless driver uses something different.
> 
> Dell laptop I'm playing with uses wlan0 instead of eth0 for the wireless.  Other wireless cards use other designations.  See what you have in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

It is, indeed, wlan0, and that's what I'm using.  It refers to "wlan0" within
the dialog boxes in system-config-network.

> iwconfig from the command line in a terminal window will let you see the wireless setup and change some parameters.  Getting the encryption keys just right between an F8 laptop and many routers seems to be a problem.  Anything beyond 64bit WEP has me stumped so far.

I set up F8 on a really snazzy Intel laptop the other day and had absolutely no
problem getting the wireless networking to work just the way that I wanted it.

There seems to be a big difference between wireless networking chipsets
(antennas, whatever). I notice that the signal strength readout from Network
Manager shows only three bars when this Dell is only about 15 feet away from my
router.  I could get about 50 feet away from it with the Intel before it
dropped to three bars.


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