Procedures are given for setting up a new wireless network card under Windows XP, older Windows versions, and Linux. At the end is an outline of issues for setting up a wireless network at home.
At present, the UCLA-MATHNET wireless network uses the 802.11b protocol in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. It covers the Applied Math suite around MSA 7619 and 7620, the Grad Lounge (MSA 6624, 6627 and adjacent areas), and the area around the Bugs Office (MS 6221). It may be used by all Math Department persons within range. The needed encryption key can be obtained at the Bugs Office.
You will need these items before you begin setting up:
b) card will also work in backward compatibility mode. The Math Department uses 104-bit WEP (encryption), sometimes advertised as 128-bit WEP. Some older cards can only do 40-bit WEP or can't do it at all; these will not work on the Math network.
Wired Equivalent Privacy) of your wireless network. Some networks do not use WEP. The ESSID of the UCLA Mathematics Department network is UCLA-MATHNET (upper case); you may obtain the WEP key from the Bugs Office.
The descriptions are written under the assumption that you will be doing the whole setup procedure in one sitting, within range of a working access point. In reality you likely will do it in phases, e.g. install the card and drivers at home, then bring the computer to work where the access points are.
This is a generic description of the procedure typically used with hardware
on Windows when using it for the first time. Read your vendor's instructions
for idiosyncratic details. In particular, some vendors want you to install the
driver and utilities first using their installer, before inserting the network
card, so the New Hardware Wizard
does not get to the driver first.
New Hardware Wizard. Insert your driver disc and tell it that you
Have Disc. A competent vendor will organize the disc so Windows can find the driver without your assistance. Windows may tell you that it has a driver for your card in its own collection. Generally the driver on your disc is more recent than the one that came with Windows.
Setupprogram on the driver disc.
View Available Wireless Networks.
Connectat the bottom, and you will be connected in a few seconds.
If you don't have the System Tray icon for your wireless network (e.g. you turned it off), or you want to indicate which networks you generally prefer, follow this procedure.
Network Connections. You may or may not have a submenu specifically for wireless networks. When you get the Network Connections dialog open, click on the icon for your wireless net. In the left panel, click on
Change Settings for This Connection. In the dialog box that appears, click on the Wireless Network tab.
Configure. If your network does not broadcast its ESSID, you will instead need to click on
Addin the lower listbox. If you are adjusting preferences, click on a network in the lower listbox and use the
Move Upand
Move Downbuttons.
Key is provided automatically(you have to provide it). Check the WEP checkbox, and fill in the WEP key in the manner described above.
Network configuration is done using the vendor-provided configuration utility. Read the instructions that come with it. The issues are generally the same as with Windows XP, though the user interface will be different. You may or may not be asked about these items, depending on how smart the vendor's program is in inferring them from data provided by the access point:
Key is provided automatically; no, it isn't.
Generally on subsequent uses it will automatically connect to the configured net. If you regularly move from one net to another, e.g. home versus work, the convenience of switching varies between vendors.
For smoothness of setup, Linux has a way to go before matching Windows XP. You should verify that these software packages are installed and functioning (you may have declined to install some of them when you initially installed Linux). The filenames shown below are appropriate for SuSE 8.1, but other distros should be the same or at least similar.
This description is oriented toward laptop machines. On a desktop
machine with a wireless card, skip the steps involving PCMCIA. The
descriptions are for SuSE Linux, and its setup program yast2 is
described. Other distros should have analogous setup tools.
officialdriver for Intersil firmware, funded by Intersil. wvlan_cs is generally considered to be obsolete. host-ap is intended to turn a Linux box into a real access point, but I have seen favorable comments about it, used as a general purpose wireless driver. You can look for which drivers come with your distro in
/lib/modules/$vers/kernel/drivers/net and
/lib/modules/$vers/kernel/drivers/net/wireless, where
$vers is the operating system version as reported by uname
-r. If you want to download and compile the latest version of the
orinoco driver, use this
URL.
On a desktop system with a real PCI card, use the orinoco driver (not cs). If it has a PCI to PCMCIA adapter based on the PLX 9052 chip, use orinoco_plx. (The Linksys, D-Link and Netgear adapters use this chip.) If you have a USB wireless NIC... At present, there isn't any driver for wireless USB NICs. Sorry.
rpm -q wireless-tools or look for
/usr/sbin/iwconfig. If you didn't install it, do that now. In
SuSE Linux, start yast2, and under Software click on Install or Remove Software. Use the
Searchfilter and look for
wireless-tools(lower case, with a hyphen). Click the checkbox indicating that you want it, and hit
Accept. It will ask for your installation media, and install the program.
rpm -q pcmcia to verify that it is
installed, or look for /sbin/cardmgr, the daemon responsible for
loading drivers for PCMCIA cards. Make sure that cardmgr is
properly started at boot time (use ps and look for the daemon by
name). If your other PCMCIA cards are working, your PCMCIA subsystem is in
good shape.
/etc/pcmcia/*.conf includes a correct driver assignment for your
wireless card. The most complete list is in hermes.conf that
comes with the orinoco driver set (see above for URL). To determine the name
and manfid of your card, insert it and do cardctl ident. If you
lack configuration information, it's recommended that you install hermes.conf,
or else create your own file, e.g. mywlan.conf (must end in
.conf). The following content is appropriate for many Agere ORiNOCO type
cards; substitute the manfid of your actual card and the name and module set of
the driver you intend to use.
device "orinoco_cs" class "network" module "hermes", "orinoco", "orinoco_cs" card "Orinoco or Intersil Prism 2 Wireless" manfid 0x0156,0x0002 bind "orinoco_cs"You need to reload (HUP) cardmgr for this to be recognized:
/etc/init.d/pcmcia reload.
Now that your infrastructure is ready to go, use the configuration module in yast2 to set network parameters.
Network, Basic, and within that,
Network Card Configuration.
Configure. If you already configured it and need to change the settings, click on
Changeunder the
Already Configured Devices. Then click on your card's row and then on
Edit.
Network Address Setupdialog appears. Select Automatic (DHCP) address setup. You should leave the hostname, nameserver and routing choices at their default values, since DHCP will supply all of these, except the default is to ignore the DHCP hostname (correct). Finally, click on
Wireless Settings.
Wireless Network Card Configuration, make these settings:
cardctl eject 2; cardctl insert
2, substituting the PCMCIA slot number that the card is in. On a laptop
with an internal wireless card, this is the appropriate procedure, and slot 2
is typically used for the internal slot. Use cardctl ident to
make sure which slot it's in.
Other distros, and older versions of SuSE Linux, store wireless
configuration information differently, in
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts. Also, aphunter looks for
wireless keys there. If your distro does not have a wireless setup feature,
you will need to edit wireless.opts. Here is a sample stanza,
which would go with a cardctl scheme called "MATHNET". (Substitute the
name of your preferred scheme; to determine what the current scheme is,
do cardctl scheme.)
MATHNET,*,*,*)
INFO="My card on UCLA Mathematics Wireless Net"
ESSID="UCLA-MATHNET"
MODE="Managed"
KEY="s:ascii-letters"
;;
The key can also be given in hex, with or without hyphens. Other parameters
can be set; see the file and its documentation for possibilities. If you set
the MAC address in the key, e.g. MATHNET,*,*,00:02:2D:*), you
can use different parameters for different wireless cards.
On a non-SuSE desktop system lacking its own wireless configuration tool, you should edit /etc/modules.conf similar to this example. The example refers to eth2; substitute the interface name actually used by your card. Specify orinoco_plx if you have a PCI-PCMCIA adapter. Since the WEP key is in the file, its mode should be 600 (read-write only by root).
alias eth2 orinoco
post-install orinoco iwconfig eth2 mode Managed essid UCLA-MATHNET \
key 's:ascii-letters'
depmod -a after modifying /etc/modules.conf.
While the new card can be activated without a reboot, it's easier to describe
by just saying do like you would in Windows.
If your laptop has a wireless card, it also needs another computer to talk to. At work your I.T. department will provide the partner. At home you have several possibilities for partners. Because of the variety of solutions here, this discussion is only an outline, so when you choose hardware and follow the vendor's setup instructions, you will have some idea of the issues.
host-ap which allows a Linux machine to act as a real access
point. I have heard good comments about this driver, but have never used it
myself. A desktop machine with host-ap has the same signal
strength issues as with Ad-Hoc mode.
silverclass cards can only do 40 bit WEP.) Use a random password generator to create it;
ipsec ranbits 104 is good if you
have that installed. It can be expressed as 26 hex digits, or as an ASCII
string of 13 bytes (avoiding control characters). If your users may have
trouble with the hex, you might prudently prefer the string despite the loss of
entropy, since WEP has known exploits against it and should not be relied on
for serious security protection.
b) at 1 MHz. For best use of the spectrum and sharing with neighbors, 802.11b networks should use channels 01, 06 or 11. Check what your neighbors are using, by using an access point finder like
aphunter, and use an unoccupied channel among these three, or the
one with the lowest signal strength. If you have several access points (e.g.
at work), adjacent ones should be on different channels. Note: You
set the channel on the access point, not on the client machine. In Ad-Hoc mode
you should set it on all partners.
Your wireless net needs four basic services. These may be provided by a Linux or Windows computer, or by a residential gateway. Some residential gateway models include an access point. While typically a single server machine provides all the services, you could also distribute them.
citizens' bandranges of 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x. The DHCP server also needs to tell the clients which machine handles routing and DNS.
Internet Connection Sharing.