wireless card will connect to every network but mine!

[metaphor]

i just got a thinkpad t42p w/ the ibm a/b/g pci adapter installed.

the pci loves to roam - it picks up about a dozen networks in my immediate area (i live in an urban apartment) and seems to flit from base to base depending on which has the strongest signal at a particular moment. there doesnt seem to be a way to keep it from doing what it [censored] well pleases as far as roaming. i'm able to use a neighbors network to connect this way but that's obviously not a good solution.

the big problem is it won't pick up the basestation sitting in my house!

i popped my old lucent b card into the pcmcia slot and it picks up my network fine.

does anyone have any ideas? i've tried everything i can think of including turning off ibm access. (the pcmcia card picks up the network fine w/ ibm access, tho).

[jsmit86]

are you filtering MAC addresses in your wireless router.

When I got my T42, I was very frustrated when I could not initialy connect! WTF! Ijust spent all this money on IBM .....etc... ... Oh ... wait a minute, did I add the T42's MAC address into the router table ??
Nope!

Added the MAC address, and smooth sailing since.

Just an idea.

One more thing .... are you broadcasting your SSID? On one of my WinXP machines with a Microsoft MN-510 USB adapter, it will NOT connect unless I briadcast SSID. I originally was hesitant to do this for "security reasons". After reading up on this stuff, I did MAC filtering to discourage the casual unathorized surfer, and of course I use WEP.

[XCoalMiner]

...does anyone have any ideas? i've tried everything i can think of including turning off ibm access.....

Here's a suggestion: Start with the simplest configurations in both your T42 and your Router/Access Point, and try to connect that way.

By that I mean, basically reset the router/ap to to the simplest settings (usually the factory defaults), such as use both channels (b ang g), no security, no password, no mac filtering, broadcast SSID, default SSID name, no ports filtered, etc. Make sure the mode of the access point is "Access Point" and not something like wireless bridge, or wireless repeator or ap client (these names vary by manufacturer and firmware).

Do the same in the driver for the a/b/g adapter, no password, both b & g, etc., etc. Then try and connect, and assuming you can do so, one at a time turn on the features you need, and maybe you'll find the cause of the problem.

Some other suggestions: Make sure the router is configured to have enough ip addresses to 'give' to the AP when the AP makes a connection, etc. Try the wardriving programs to see if your a/b/g card can see the signal from your ap, Netstumbler is a very simple one to use -- you run it, and it reports all signals it picks up, and shows some details.

If none of this works, post back.

[metaphor]

yes, i added the mac address to the basestation's list of authorized access.

i tried running it as an open network just now and i'm able to connect that way so i guess that's progress and a start.

but with all the wlans in the neighborhood here i'm going to need to close the network somehow. if i turn wep on and have a list of authorized users, is that pretty secure?

[XCoalMiner]

... if i turn wep on and have a list of authorized users, is that pretty secure?

WEP is thought of as the least secure of the WiFi encryption schemes. But still it is more secure than no encryption at all. That last phrase, "more secure than no encryption at all" is the key. Likely no one is going to crack your encryption and steal your wireless bandwidth. For someone to do so, they'd have to also spoof the MAC address of your a/b/g pci adapter.

That said, you can proceed to turn on more secure features, use the turn-on-one-thing-at-a-time concept. Try WPA (the next level of encryption above WEP) with a long pass phrase, then enable key renewal rates, or TKIP encryption schemes. Lastly, if you want to monitor if anyone is using your bandwidth, look at the access point's connection logs. Some manufacturers have functionality to copy log entries to a simple monitoring running on your PC.

[jsmit86]

yes, i added the mac address to the basestation's list of authorized access.

i tried running it as an open network just now and i'm able to connect that way so i guess that's progress and a start.

but with all the wlans in the neighborhood here i'm going to need to close the network somehow. if i turn wep on and have a list of authorized users, is that pretty secure?

I had a similar issue when I added my first XP pc to my wireless network.
The Win98 machine used a Netgear USB adapter that was able to use passphrase encryption in the same way as my Linksys Router. When I added the Microsoft MN-510 adapter with a Win XP PC, I tried using that same passphrase. It did not work. When I changed over to usng a hex key I also had some problems at first until I learned that the length of the key had to be exactly 26 characters. It seems that most if not all of the WinXP wireless config utilities only support hex based keys.

Once I had the keys input correctly, everything worked. I am still limited to WEP because I have the Win98 box with the Netgear USB adapter. It does not support WPA etc.

After all of that.... the point is to make sure that any key is entered in a correct format on the Thinkpad.