Re: A couple of minor issues with NM

["Darren Albers" <dalbers gmail com>]

On 12/22/06, Timothy Murphy <tim birdsnest maths tcd ie> wrote:
> I've recently gone over to NM,
> and it has solved a few problems for me,
> but it has brought a few new ones with it:
>
> 1) I have two WiFi networks in this house,
> but I always use one of them, with ESSID dd-wrt.
> I read somewhere that NM would work out which network
> was usually used;
> but in my case this does not seem to work -
> NM always chooses the other network,
> although I never use it.
>
> Is there some config file where one can specify which network
> one wants to use?
> (I know I could delete one network from NM,
> but I prefer not to do that, as I very occasionally use it.)

If NM sees multiple networks that it has profiles for it will connect
to the one you last connected to.  Is that not the behavior you are
seeing?

> 2) I have two similar icons in my panel -
> one from NM, and one from knetworkmanager.
> (I am running KDE under Fedora-6.)
> Is this normal?

No, if you are running KDE remove nm-applet from your system and stick
with knetworkmanager.

> 3) Is there any documentation, eg tutorial or FAQ, on NM?
> The Fedora implementation seems to have very little useful information.

http://live.gnome.org/DarrenAlbers/NetworkManagerFAQ

If you see anything you would like added please post to the list and I
will update it.

> 4) NM loses connection every few hours,
> and it seems very hard to re-connect.
> Basically, I try "service NetworkManager restart",
> which seems to work about half the time;
> if that doesn't work, I re-boot.
> Is there a simpler way of going about it?
>
> Why incidentally does it lose connection?
> The WiFi strength, as given by NM,
> seems to vary wildly without any change in the position
> of any of the computers involved,
> varying between 50% and 0% over a few hours.

I am not sure but it sounds like a signal issue, for example until I
moved my AP I would lose connection everytime the microwave was run!
Later one of my Neighbors got a fancy MIMO router that kept hopping
channels and killing my connection on one side of my house etc...
What type of Network Card is this?

> 5) Not really an NM question,
> but I have a Linksys WRT54GL running dd-wrt .
> Does anyone know how to install a WEP key on it?
> [I know WEP is not very secure;
> but it is the only encryption my PCMCIA card understands.]

Yes, go to Wireless, then wireless security and select WEP