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Date:  Fri, 21 Nov 2003 20:25:19 -0500
Sender: os2-wireless_users-owner <os2-wireless_users-owner@2rosenthals.com>
Reply-To: os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
From:  Lewis G Rosenthal <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com>
To:  os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com
Subject: [OS2Wireless] OS/2 software's site survey function

Randy, as Sam has said, setting your SSID to ANY (or leaving it blank in 
WiFiState) should allow you to pick up an SSID broadcast. This assumes a 
couple of things:

   1. The driver you're using supports this (Jens' drivers do)
   2. The AP to which you would like to connect is broadcasting its beacon
   3. There aren't a half dozen AP's stepping on each other (I went to
      ISPCON in Santa Clara following Warpstock; Jens' Cisco driver
      worked flawlessly in the convention center, where I must have
      picked up - and switched between - over a half dozen SSIDs)

Caveats for using "dynamic" SSID:

   1. If there are multiple APs all broadcasting beacons, you may find
      yourself hopping between them, particularly in situations where
      people are walking about (humans, being ~90+% water, have a
      tendancy to jam microwave signals). In that case, set your SSID to
      the one you really do want to use.
   2. The AP must be broadcasting its beacon (SSID), or you will see
      nothing when set to infrastructure mode (I haven't tried ad hoc
      with this). The client has no way of reading SSIDs from other
      clients on the network (for this, you would need a utility such as
      airsnort, netstumbler, or kismet).
   3. Just because you can pick up an SSID doesn't mean you'll get IP!
      If the network to which you want to attach is all statically
      assigned, then good luck; you'll have to know what the addressing
      scheme is and pick one which is hopefully available to use. Your
      DHCP client will get no paramaters.
   4. If the AP has WEP enabled, even if it is beaconing, you won;t be
      able to associate with it (or see its SSID in WiFiState).

HTH!

On 11/21/2003 12:19 pm, Randy Fowler (personal) thus wrote :

>Hi All,
>
>I may have asked this before, but I don't think I got an answer.
>
>Is there any OS/2 software/driver that will show the available Access 
>Points, the SSID's being broadcasted, signal strengths, noise, etc?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Randy Fowler
>  
>
-- 
Lewis 
------------------------------------------------------------ 
Lewis G Rosenthal, CNA 
   Rosenthal & Rosenthal 
Accountants / Network Consultants 
  New York / Northern Virginia           www.2rosenthals.com
Team OS/2  / NetWare Users International      www.novell.com
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This OS/2 system (Apollo) uptime is 0 days 08:54 hours and 59 seconds


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