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Is there a way to abort the wireless connection attempt in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy if you mistakenly selected the wrong wireless access point to connect to?

Here's what I mean, my R61 Atheros card (works great, btw) picks up quite a few wireless access points. As an example, lets say that my R61 sees wifi access points AP_01 and AP_02, and I don't have access privileges to AP_02 (WPA protected, for instance). If I mistakenly click on AP_02 Ubuntu will try to connect to it and I have to wait until it times out before I can select another access point to connect to. How can I abort this errant connection attempt so I don't have to wait till it times out?

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Uncheck "Enable Wireless"? I'm not sure because I've been using Wicd instead of the default network manager, and it lets me cancel easily.

If worse comes to worse, open the Run thing and enter "sudo ifconfig ath0 down" and that will kill it.

I think you can just go ahead and click on the other wireless AP. When I boot up my wireless card goes for my neighbors "linksys" network and not mine, I just click on mine in the little manager and it aborts the connection to linksys (it's normally still trying to connect) and goes to mine.

bobbarker wrote:I think you can just go ahead and click on the other wireless AP. When I boot up my wireless card goes for my neighbors "linksys" network and not mine, I just click on mine in the little manager and it aborts the connection to linksys (it's normally still trying to connect) and goes to mine.

I agree on this

Just choose another one

Here's the problem I'm seeing:

I'm in a coffee shop that is next to a bookstore. My laptop sees the coffee shop's AP and the bookstore's AP, and the signal strength is at 1 or 2 bars for both APs. I select the coffee shop AP and my laptop tries to connect to it but it's not able to establish a connection for some reason. So the wifi icon just spins and spins (showing that it's busy, trying to connect). And it just remains stuck in this "busy" state until it times out before it allows me to select another AP, say the bookstore AP. While in this state, even if I click on another AP, nothing happens, no response, as if I didn't even click on another AP. When I check the wifi manager to see the list of networks that are available, the coffee shop AP is still the selected AP (the radio button indicates this). It doesn't matter how many times I try selecting another AP, the wifi manager still shows the coffee shop AP as selected. So this is exactly what's happening with it's stuck in this "busy" state. I have to wait till it times out before I can select another AP. And I'm also not able to connect to the bookstore AP either, even though it is detected with a signal strength of 1 or 2 bars. When I boot into Vista I'm able to connect to the AP and get online. So I know it's related to Ubuntu, and so far, I only have this problem at this particular coffee shop/bookstore. Very strange.

Here's a contrasting example:

When I'm at home and my laptop picks up my neighbors APs (open access). I can connect to my neighbor's AP, get online and everything works. I can, of course, connect to my own AP without problems. If I select my neighbor's AP and the wifi icon is busy spining trying to make a connection and then I select my own AP, then this will abort the connection to my neighbor's AP and will connect to mine. In this scenario my wifi is not stuck in a busy state where I have to wait till it times out before I can select another AP.

A hack to get around it (probably not the best solution):
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

Or something along those lines, basically killing it and restarting should be faster than waiting it out.


I still recommend Wicd (look for it in APT). It may not look as cool as NetworkManager, but it does not mess up like that as often.

aaa wrote:A hack to get around it (probably not the best solution):
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

Or something along those lines, basically killing it and restarting should be faster than waiting it out.


I still recommend Wicd (look for it in APT). It may not look as cool as NetworkManager, but it does not mess up like that as often.

I downloaded and installed Wicd and it works a lot faster than NetworkManager. It also has the option to Cancel the connection attempt instead of having to wait till it times out, so that's useful.

I would like to see a better, clearer indicator of the AP you are currently connected to in Wicd in addition to the name on the bottom of the screen (e.g. highlighting the name of the AP or using a different icon or anything else that makes it easier to spot the AP you are connected to when looking at the list of available to wireless networks in the Wicd Manager).

Also, there's no information about the connection rate with the AP to which you are connected in Wicd (108Mbps, 54Mbps, 36Mbps, 24Mbps, etc). So if there are multiple APs available, how do you choose which one to connect to that has the highest rate?

But so far Wicd seems to works quite nicely. Will have to use it for a while to see how it fares. I would recommend trying Wicd if you are having wifi issues with the Ubuntu NetworkManager.