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General discussion

Wireless connection is local ONLY

Jun 20, 2005 8:36AM PDT

Running SuSE 9.0 on a Dell Inspirion 1100 w/Truemobile 1150 wireless card. I can connect to my local network, but not beyond. Settings are identical to those of my onboard lan (up to "wlan-pcmcia" entries)which are:
Module Name (blank)
Options (blank)
Wireless settings
Operating Mode Manual
ESSID linksys
NWID NONE (my local network name)
Encryption key (correct)
Nick Name (blank)
The wired connections works, and the router is a BEFW11S4. What is wrong with this connection?

Discussion is locked

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Check your router.
Jun 21, 2005 4:59AM PDT

Go into your router configuration: normally just type 192.168.1.1 into a browser on a connected PC, then use User: ______ Password: admin

Check and see if the WLAN is enabled, normally on a linksys you can find this by hitting the ''administration'' tab and scrolling to the middle of the page. Some linksys routers come with the WLAN disabled by default.

Also, I'd suggest you set the DHCP lease time to the maximum.

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That's a very old SUSE.
Jun 21, 2005 5:18AM PDT

I don't expect it to be current enough for this to work proper.

See if the latest Live CD works.

Bob

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RE: Wireless lan local ONLY
Jun 21, 2005 6:34AM PDT

Very old? It's the last Personal Edition I've seen in stores, and the only distro I ever got to actually connect to my router. I will do as you suggest, but do you know of a reason why I can connect to my local network, but not to the outside world?

ROOTDUDE: Wireless is enabled, and the lease is set for 24 hours. My eth0 connection goes outside, and the wireless conx works with WinXP. Frustrating!

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I have 9.2 here from a local shop.
Jun 21, 2005 6:37AM PDT

You could check with mother what's current.

Best of luck as you check your ifconfig entries.

Bob

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RE: wireless lan local ONLY
Jun 21, 2005 8:06AM PDT

Bob,
I usually buy SuSE from my local Fry's, but I will search around. I have the 9.2 LiveCD on hand; it looks very nice on my desktop, but can't run on the laptop. Got a string of error messages, ending with ''kernel panic. Out of memory and no killable processes''.
Please clarify one thing for me before this thread is closed: I thought wireless config was separate from the ifconfig entries, but your commentary indicates otherwise.
Regards,
joe

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About ifconfig and more.
Jun 21, 2005 9:11AM PDT

From what you write, I'd be checking the ifconfig /all output, the DNS entries, the default route or in shorter terms, ALL the TCP/IP entries.

About 9.0. That has to be over 1 year old and I was glad for the newer versions because with each version I had better hardware support and easier setups. You can bang your head on the keyboard if you wish, but I've learned my lesson.

Bob

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(NT) (NT) I just installed 9.3 - it is even better yet
Jun 22, 2005 5:29PM PDT
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Soon for me. I don't get to play until...
Jun 22, 2005 10:52PM PDT

My next software version is done. So I'm at 9.2 for today... Next week maybe.

Bob

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UPDATE: wireless conx is local only
Jun 30, 2005 1:36AM PDT

I tried SuSE 9.3 a few days ago; YaST has changed enough so I can't even get a local network connection now, so I'm giving up on SuSE for the laptop. Discovered that the Mandrake Move live CD works, and I'm told that Ubuntu will work, also.

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Mandrake is now Mandriva.
Jun 30, 2005 1:41AM PDT

I liked the old name better.

-> You will find that one distro may support a not as popular card or device and another distro overlooked it. This is how most distros work. It is possible to add drivers, but is:

a. Beyond most user's capabilities.
b. I can't help with it in this small box except for cases like the Nvidia and similar situations and even then I have to just leave it at "go get it and follow the directions."

-> I think that most should testdrive a few distros until they find what they like.

Bob