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hvymtlsteve
December 5th, 2009, 05:07 PM
Why is it that the results vary so much between wifi-radar, wicd, and the stock gnome network manager?

I'm staying at a hotel where I observed that the wireless router on my floor is directly outside my room, and for some reason I couldn't get connected with network manager. So, I went ahead and removed it, and installed wicd from the deb, and it worked like a charm (didn't spend too much time mulling this over, I have seen the same thing in the past).

Shouldn't these be functionally equivalent?

subdivision
December 5th, 2009, 05:42 PM
My own experience in Arch with those two programs has been that wicd is far and away the better of the two. I don't think I've ever even managed to get network manager to work.

They SHOULD be functionally equivalent, but in practice it doesn't seem to work that way.

doorknob60
December 5th, 2009, 06:52 PM
That's why I use the console for connecting to wireless. All I need is iwconfig, iwlist, and dhclient :) (and WPAsupplicant sometimes). I do use WIcd on my Arch laptop though, and it works good.

cariboo
December 5th, 2009, 08:11 PM
I've experienced exactly the opposite, network-manger works much better than wicd on my HP laptop. Wifi-radar and network-manager see most of the networks in the neighbourhood, while wicd barely sees my own access points.

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 08:14 PM
I use this:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "linksys"
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
dhcpcd

And then I'm connected.

Giant Speck
December 5th, 2009, 08:22 PM
I use this:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "linksys"
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
dhcpcd

And then I'm connected.

When I grow up, I want to be as 1337 as you.

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 08:28 PM
When I grow up, I want to be as 1337 as you.

ww. No, only for my server. Which is not going to be up until the 26th. I use this script here. I set it as a startup application.

myusername
December 5th, 2009, 09:02 PM
ww. No, only for my server. Which is not going to be up until the 26th. I use this script here. I set it as a startup application.

never thought about using a script

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 09:03 PM
never thought about using a script

What do you use then?

phrostbyte
December 5th, 2009, 09:05 PM
I use this:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "linksys"
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
dhcpcd

And then I'm connected.

Do you know if there is a command which scans for wireless networks and returns their SSIDs?

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 09:08 PM
Do you know if there is a command which scans for wireless networks and returns their SSIDs?

Yes! iwlist wlan0 scanning

I am assuming your wireless is wlan0. Also use it with sudo if using it normally doesn't work.

Xbehave
December 5th, 2009, 09:13 PM
Network-manager does what it says on the tin, it managed networks and it wors pretty well, it's extensible (supports VPNs, etc), runs sciprts and exports over dbus to make it pretty powerful

Wicd/wifi-radar are alternatives to networkManager but AFAIK it doesn't offer support for VPNs, doesn't export info over dbus and has a different scripting setup.

doing it manually may be L33T but unless your running a server its unneeded when there are nice GUI alternatives about (i think NetworkManager even has a CLI now)

cariboo
December 5th, 2009, 09:53 PM
The Ubuntu server doesn't have a gui, so everything has to be done on the command line.

I don't understand why you'd want to use wireless on a sever. I had to transfer 47GB of files to my server yesterday, it took about one hour and forty-five minutes, on my 100Mbps network, using wireless would have taken 4 times as long. The best transfer rate I've ever seen using wireless is 2Mbps, while my wired connection averages 9.7Mbps.

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 10:05 PM
The Ubuntu server doesn't have a gui, so everything has to be done on the command line.

I don't understand why you'd want to use wireless on a sever. I had to transfer 47GB of files to my server yesterday, it took about one hour and forty-five minutes, on my 100Mbps network, using wireless would have taken 4 times as long. The best transfer rate I've ever seen using wireless is 2Mbps, while my wired connection averages 9.7Mbps.

Yes it does. If you install it manually ;)

t0p
December 5th, 2009, 10:29 PM
Do you know if there is a command which scans for wireless networks and returns their SSIDs?

Have a look at iwlist.


man iwlist

I expect its scan parameter will help you.

dragos240
December 5th, 2009, 10:34 PM
Have a look at iwlist.


man iwlistI expect its scan parameter will help you.

I beat you to it.