Re: Wireless NICs not obeying 'SSID' setting.

Well, I attempted ifconfig ral0 -bgscan and that didn't help as it just
switched SSIDs on me... Attempting ifconfig ral0 roaming device now in hopes
that will work! =)

Thanks for the assistance.

On 6/28/07, Sam Leffler <sam_at_errno.com> wrote:
>
> Sam Leffler wrote:
> > Kevin Gerry wrote:
> >> I've noticed that in a recent patch that when you set a NIC with
> ifconfig
> >> ath0 ssid "This One" that it won't always honor that and jump on the
> >> strongest one.
> >>
> >> Example:
> >>
> >> 3 WAPs: SSIDs WAP1, WAP2, WAP3
> >>
> >> I have set ath0's ssid to "WAP2" and ral0's ssid to "WAP3". They both
> will
> >> honor the ssid setting for the first connection. However, after a few
> >> hours/etc the drivers both associate with WAP1.
> >>
> >> The settings to require the specific SSID are in
> >> /etc/start_if.ral0/start_if.ath0. There aren't any conflicting
> >> directives to
> >> force it to go blank and select a random AP.
> >
> > You're probably roaming.  wlandebug roam will verify what's going on.
> > You can disable roaming several ways:
> >
> > ifconfig ral0 roaming device
> >
> > should do the trick (if you set it to manual then you won't do what you
> > want if your beacon is turned off).  Alternatively you can do
> >
> > ifconfig ral0 -bgscan
> >
> > as roaming won't take place w/o bg scanning.
>
> If you are roaming you can also just fiddle with the roaming thresholds;
>    e.g. roam:rssi11g and roam:rate11g.  I haven't updated the man page
> for ifconfig for these yet; they are threshold settings that when
> crossed cause the system to consider roaming to a different ap.
>
> The handling of ssid changed when roaming went in; it's now a "desired
> ssid".  That is, if the scan doesn't see an ap with the desired ssid
> then it'll associate to another ap if possible.  Should the ap w/ the
> desired ssid re-appear and roaming is enabled then you'll switch over to
> it.  There is also hysteresis to this algorithm so you don't just bounce
> around from one ap to another.
>
>         Sam
>