not detecting own network but finds others

[Kilcaff]

Hello,

I'm having issue seeing my wireless network on my laptop (HP 6735s).
I can see other networks around my building but not the one sitting 40cm from me!

My adapter is a BCM4312 802.11b/g and my network is running at 802.11b at the moment.

All the drivers seem installed so I can't see why it just isn't seeing my own wireless network.

I'm hoping this can be sorted, especially before I move onto the problems my desktop is having with the wpn311 card...
I've made the move to Ubuntu after wanting to go Linux for a few years but having a failed attempt involving about 6 disks back in early 2000/2001! So far I'm loving the desktop, speed and tweakablity but this wifi (and some HD output issues on my desktop) are niggling me!

Thanks for any help,
Adam.

[t0mppa]

Check if you have the same issue as in this thread.

[Kilcaff]

Well it sounds like that's likely but I get:

lo no frequency information.

eth0 no frequency information.

eth1 no frequency information.

when I do 'iwlist channe'l and 'nl80211 not found' when 'I try iw reg set'.

[Fire_Chief]

Just to cover all bases...do you have your wireless network set to not broadcast the SSID? May want to double check your router or wireless AP's settings to verify that it is broadcasting the SSID (network name).

Cheers!

[Kilcaff]

Well it's definitely the Europe thing as I've changed the router to a channel between 1 and 11 and it's popped up.

As there are other computers connecting though I've had to change it back.

Interestingly whilst it was available it wasn't retrieving an ip address.

It's broadcasting the ssid.

Any ideas how to get it to show the European channels?

[Kilcaff]

Anybody able to help with this?I'm new to Linux so apologies if there's a really simple way of doing this, though after reading a lot of threads it seems there probably isn't!Also, do the passphrases need to be entered in hex? When I changed the channel to a number below 11 and it did appear on the scan I couldn't get an IP address when I tried to connect with the pass phrase.Cheers!

[t0mppa]

Did you try editing the options file, if the iw command results in problems?

[Fire_Chief]

do the passphrases need to be entered in hex? When I changed the channel to a number below 11 and it did appear on the scan I couldn't get an IP address when I tried to connect with the pass phrase.Cheers!

It depends on whether you are using WEP or WPA for your wireless encryption. If using WEP, then yes, the passphrase should be entered in hex. If WPA, then it's just a password entered in regular ASCII format.

[Kilcaff]

Did you try editing the options file, if the iw command results in problems?

I'm a complete novice in most things ubuntu so how do I do this?

I created a text file called options in the directory shown in the thread link above (/etc/modprobe.d) with options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=EU in it but it hasn't done anything I can see. Of course it's just a text file so it may need a different extension or something. (novice!)

[t0mppa]

You did it all correctly, you can actually change it to a options.conf file, so that the system won't warn you all the time about files without an extension in said directory being ignored in future releases. Like I said on the other thread, one user had to add in the other line as well (options mac80211 ieee80211_regdom=64), so you could try that, but this whole options file approach was deemed outdated even on Jaunty, so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high about it.

I did some further research on the matter and tested the iw, which worked perfectly well for me. Was able to change to US limit of 1-11 or to Japanese limit of 1-14 without a problem. When it returns the nl80211 not found message, it means that your driver does not support changing the regulatory domain this way.

And that seems to be the case with the Broadcom STA (default driver for the BCM4312 chip) at least and since it's a proprietary, i.e., closed source, driver written by Broadcom, there's not much to be done about it. b43 might offer better support, so that's one option as well.