jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote:

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 11:20 pm, kevin.kempter@dataintellect.com wrote:

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Hi List;

when I left home this week I could connect to my home wireless (temporarily in an 'open' config) with no problems.

Now Im at a hotel that has wireless available. If I go to the Kinternet tool in the system try , right click and choose wireless connection I see several wireless networks in the scan for networks tab. If I choose any of them and click on connect I get an error that I could not connect because I am not "associated' with any wireless network.

I have my ipw2200 wireless device set to managed, auto speed, auto channel and no encryption ('open').

Any thoughts?

Not anything helpful. We had the same problem over Xmas in a hotel that had wireless internet access. I spent most of every day there attempting to connect w/ Suse9.3 on a LinuxCertified lappy. We too can connect at home w/ specific address or wirelessly, in case someone wants to watch telly and do email at the same time. It is setup w/ DHCP. I couldn't associate w/ their wireless even tho the laptop saw the connections. Apparently the one person who could have helped us, that is the one person who supposedly knew anything about that network, was "on vacation in Brazil for a month ;and his office *couldn't find him*." It appeared to me that what was needed was some sort of address of their AP But they claimed, and given the skill level and assorted language problems, it was probably true, no one except their missing Brazilian vacationer actually knew what that might be.

Still that they actually said the sentence above re the Vacation was good for a laugh. I don't believe it,but IF it's true we can all grab a hotel/Motel that wants to be able to offer free internet connections to all it's room w/o having to run wires for ethernet, and all those bridges etc.

And "support" them for a fee via email. huh? Even give them a price so tempting they would sign the contract before they noticed we were working from Beleize , or Palau, or any other Island Paradise, w/ possible exception of Newfoundland. Too chilly there. Whatcha think, a Suse consortium of users who have used it for more than a year.. and we could clean up. ;-D

jfweber -- You're right. You could clean up. I am an engineer for a major manufacturer of wireless devices. One guy we hired about 18 months ago came in claiming he was a partner in a business that installed wireless networks in hotels. The business had gone under due to "his partner mis-managing the finances." His role was supposedly to be the technical guru, including supporting the customers. Well - we expected he would do well supporting our industrial customers, but we had to let him go after two months because he would typcially tell a customer some off-the-wall thing about their wireless devices, and never follow up to make sure they had actually solved their problem. He apparently did the same thing with the hotel patrons he was "supporting" We only kept him on as long as we did so we could establish a pattern. Kevin -- Just because you can "see" a network doesn't necessarily mean you can associate with it. The network would have to be set to open association and no encryption. It's highly likely that most of the networks visible were at least minimally secured networks for businesss other than the hotel. Your hotel should be able to at least tell you the correct BSSID for their network. This sad state of affairs is usually the case in hotels - they buy the wireless service from some third party, and have no one on staff who can even explain what the SSID of their network is, let alone support it. The hotel management doesn't care that the third party can't adequately support it since they don't care if you ever connect. They just want to be able to advertise the fact that they have wireless Internet. I work in an area that has over 100 networks visible from my office. Most of them are so poorly secured that it would talke less than three minutes to break the encryption (WEP only.) Some are more so. Some are wide open. I hope I've at least explained why you couldn't associate with the visible networks at your hotel. -- Dave Grosvold

At 01/07/06 10:12, Bruce Marshall wrote:

On Saturday 07 January 2006 10:49, Dave Grosvold wrote:

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Kevin -- Just because you can "see" a network doesn't necessarily mean you can associate with it. The network would have to be set to open association and no encryption. It's highly likely that most of the networks visible were at least minimally secured networks for businesss other than the hotel. Your hotel should be able to at least tell you the correct BSSID for their network. This sad state of affairs is usually the case in hotels - they buy the wireless service from some third party, and have no one on staff who can even explain what the SSID of their network is, let alone support it. The hotel management doesn't care that the third party can't adequately support it since they don't care if you ever connect. They just want to be able to advertise the fact that they have wireless Internet.

And some hotel setups for wireless use a web interface to allow access.

You can connect to the wireless system but you can't do anything with it (all traffic is essentially blocked) until you try to use your browser. At which point the system will intercept the call and "Welcome you to <such and such> hotel" and please enter the password. Once you enter the password obtainable (hopefully) from the front desk, you can access the internet.

Don't know if wired is different from wireless in requiring the password, but with the hotel I've been using for the last several trips, all I had to do on the Web page was a) choose the free, daily log in requirement vs the for-fee long term connection, and b) accept the user agreement. Then I was onto the Internet. No password required. Eric Hines There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. --Bertrand Russell