[gentoo-user] Re: Where's my wireless AP?

[Mick]

On 18 April 2010 22:28, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
> Last night I was connected wirelessly to my access point and all worked fine.
> Well, towards the end the connection was bobbing up and down as far as my
> unreliable broadcom NIC is concerned (nothing wrong with the router).  I
> decided to shut it down and go to bed.
>
> Today the AP is just not there!  Not there as far as this stupid broadcom
> wireless NIC is concerned.  The same machine booted into MSWindows has no
> problem seeing the AP and associating with it.  Another laptop can also see
> the AP and connect to it.
>
> How come the broadcom cannot see it in Gentoo, but it can see all the
> neighbours APs which have a much weaker signal and even associate and get an
> IP address from one of them?!  I am lost as to what might be causing this.
>
> Could it be some lock file that was not removed when the machine is rebooted
> or the wlan0 interface taken down?  Any ideas how I can troubleshoot this?

OK, I found what the problem was ... the AP is currently transmitting
on channel 13, which it seems is outside the capabilities of the b43
driver.  I am blaming the driver here because the Windows 7 OS has no
problem using channel 13, while iwlist wlan0 in Gentoo shows only up
to channel 11.  :-(

Will need to wait for the driver to hopefully improve.
-- 
Regards,
Mick