Various recent threads about networking issues

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Janina Sajka wrote:

> My experience of reordered interfaces is primarily with my laptop which
> has both a wired and wireless device. In my home location, things stay
> pretty stable, even though I switch between these two several times a
> week depending where in my premises I use my laptop. I set the
> appropriate static ip via directives in my dhcpd server under
> /etc/dhcpd.conf based on mac address. This works reliably, even though
> there are some 30 other wap servers in my vicinity as long as I remember
> to specify essid with iwconfig. I have never succeeded adding essid to
> any /etc config file in the past. I'll try again.
>
> The problem comes when I'm on the road trolling for a dhcp address via
> whatever local service might be available.I generally preferred wired,
> when I can get it, but often use wired at night in the hotel and
> wireless during the day around the conference table. I have frequently
> seen eth0 assigned to wireless. In fact, I've seen all kinds of crazy
> designations for wireless device made up of a few alpha chars and about
> 5 or 6 digits.
>
> In other words, I've learned from experience, to look at the output of
> iwconfig (without arguments) if I'm not getting an address off the first
> try with dhclient. Oh, and yes, I still find dhclient most reliable.

I've found the latest NetworkManager updates are getting to be very robust 
for grabbing wired or wireless connections "out of the air".  There are 
still a few quirks and a few missing features, but mostly, I can walk into 
a new environment and immediately connect wired or wireless via DHCP.  If 
the ESSID is hidden, I may need to specify the connection and if it's 
encrypted, I need to enter the key, but after that, it Just Works the vast 
majority of the time.

You do need the interfaces to stay in one place, though...

>
> Just my two cents American.
>
> Thanks for the new scripts.
>
> Janina
>
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs