Re: Network Manager reason codes

[mike cloaked <mike cloaked gmail com>]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Sven Nielsen <post svennielsen de> wrote:

> I am sorry that there seems to be some issues with the software/hardware you are using.
>
> You can try if fine-tuning the "sens" parameter of iwconfig helps.
>
> Check the signal level you get with iwconfig, then adapt the sens value, and try if roaming happens faster
> if you then change position in your home.

There are two separate issues here - one is the initial connection
going to the less appropriate AP - and the other is roaming once you
are connected. Both seem to be problematic for my case.

Maybe I am missing something but presumably iwconfig is a temporary
work around each time I boot the laptop - and it would seem that since
NM would attempt a connection before I got a chance to set up a
terminal and enter commands from the CLI then NM would already have
done the wrong thing for me.

I presume you would need to enter something like "iwconfig wlan0 sens 10"
and then restart NM to see if that helped - but it would mean doing
this workaround each time I boot the machine?

I will certainly run a test over the weekend to see if this makes a
difference - and if it does it would help.  However in this case
unless I set the sens alteration command as part of a script in
rc.local or similar then I would need to do the tweak after each login
which is far from ideal - it would be nice if this could be a much
more automated process. Indeed for a less experienced user this would
seem an undesirable thing to have to do. I am used to hacking to get
the system to work as I like it to.

> Those 20 APs were actually built and configured by me, and one of the requirements for that installation was
> uninterrupted WLAN Voip calling while the clients roam between the APs. So, in theory, roaming is a very well
> working concept. Still, it depends on the hardware and software/drivers working well together.

Possibly once connected altering the value of the sens command may
then help the roaming aspect if what you suggest will help my use
case.

> For debugging, you can also try if disabling network-manager and configuring the connection manually
> in /etc/networks gives better roaming behaviour.

You mean set up wpa_supplicant manually?  I used to do this but I
thought that we had moved forward to a more modern era where doing
this manually was a thing of the past!

> If roaming does not work for you, it is a misconfiguration or a bug, and defining several networks with
> different BSSIDs for the sams SSID is nothing but crude workaround which should not be necessary.

I totally agree but I would like to know where any misconfiguration
has happened - all I do is boot the machine and NetworkManager shows
the available connections - and I connect - where do I then have to
look for misconfigured files? Or is this a set of standard
configurations that are set in the package in Fedora that may be
different from configs in your operating system?  Are you also using
Fedora or a different linux distribution?

It would be so nice to get this resolved!

Regards,
Mike
>

-- 
mike c