On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 09:53:27AM -0200, Martin Marques wrote: > Manish Kathuria escribió: > >I am using Fedora 8 x86_64 (kernel 2.6.23.14-107) on my Dell Vostro > >laptop which has a Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wireless mini PCI > >lan device which has been automatically detected and uses the b43 > >wireless driver. > > > >I have configured the wireless device wlan0 using a static IP address > >and have provided the ESSID, CHANNEL, MODE, RATE settings. The > >wireless device comes up and gets associated with the Access Point / > >Wireless Router when the system is started. However if the wireless > >router is restarted the wireless device on the laptop fails to > >associate with it again and I have to restart the network service in > >order to connect to it. If I remember correctly, the Intel Centrino > >ipw2200 device on my older laptop never had this problem and nor does > >a PCI wireless card (Realtek 8180) which I have configured using > >ndiswrapper. What could be the reason for this problem ? Any tips or > >suggestions ? > > Use NetworkManager. Good advice. Alternatively you could use wpa_supplicant (whether or not you are using WPA encryption), or you could simply do "iwconfig wlan0 essid $ESSID" whenever you detect that your AP has been reset. If you want a technical explanation...the hardware in question is "soft MAC" device which uses the mac80211 infrastructure in the kernel. The mac80211 component has a limited MLME implemenation which relies on userland intervention at a number of points. One of those points is for triggering associations. When you reset your AP, your association is lost. So, you must trigger a new association. wpa_supplicant (which is also used by NetworkManager) is smart enough to trigger the association for you. As for why it works for the other devices cited, the ipw2200 has a robust MLME implemented in firmware. It does not require userland intervention. The rtl8180 actually is a "soft MAC" device, but since you are using ndiswrapper (which should not be needed in F8 BTW) the Windows driver must contain it's own MLME implementation. Hth! John -- John W. Linville linville@xxxxxxxxxx
