At 17:48:55 on Thursday Thursday 24 December 2009, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> wrote:
Stan Goodman wrote:
I did not set an SSID in the wireless card, but left that rubric empty. Once I got it rhrough my head what to look for after loading knetworkmanager, I was immediately able to see the router, which announced its own SSID, which I recognized. Once I clicked on it, I was able to communicate with the 'Net. To repeat, I did not write an SSID in the wireless card's configuration. Now that I see all this, I recall that this configuration was exactly what I had done years ago in OS/2; my confusion now has been because my memory didn't serve me well. I apologize.
When you use KNetworkManager, it can get the SSID from the signal, as you discovered.
As for security, I can contribute an anecdote about a remarkable stupidity here. A novice friend had a wireless network installed in his home. The telephone company did that for him, and sold him the wireless router. (I didn't go that route.) The following day he told me that when he fired his machine up, he was able to see his router, but it was listed three times, not once, with three different signal strengths. Explanation: The telephone company gives the same SSID to all the routers that they deploy in peoples' homes, and the spurious signals were those of his neighbor on the right and the one on the left. They also fail to install WEP or WPA, despite the fact that this is a country of mostly multiple dwellings and apartment houses. He and I have single dwellings, but I'm sure that there are many people who can't be sure through whose account they are accessing the 'Net. There should be a group rate for such cases, like with hospitalization, but there isn't.
Whoever did that is incompetent. They left everyone with wide open access to their computers. I hope you changed that.
Of course they are incompetent, they work for the telephone company. Change it? I fixed my friend's network, and remark about it to somebody in the TP Business Office, but of course they think I am a crank, so they ignore it. Same thing happened years ago when OS/2 hadn't yet found a way to work against PPtP, which is what the telephone company uses for Internet. (I think only us and the Netherlands uses it.) Their answer to my statement that I did not have Windows was to sneer and answer that I was talking foolishness, because "Every computer has Windows". That wouldn't happen today, of course. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org