[WLANware] Associating with olsr-dhcp from linux

[elektra]

I'm not sure about stock ubuntu drivers, but in general there are not 
many choices. Atheros with recent madwifi driver works, but has 
sometimes issues when fragmentation is used. On the good side you can 
fix the Essid to bypass issues introduced by miserable drivers which 
fail to associate and create Essid cell splits instead. Even though I'd 
recommend it (note that USB is not supported, but works for me with 
ndiswrapper).

iwconfig ath0 ap 02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE

is the command to fix the essid to 02:CA:FF:EE:BA:BE

The best driver is the - sadly - proprietary broadcom closed source 
binary - which just works, and with Freifunk firmware you can fix the 
Essid from the Web-If as well. This also works on the command line with 
OpenWRT, but I'd have to search the web for the way how to do it. These 
forementioned two drivers keep our big ad-hoc cells together (mostly the 
broadcom). No matter which crappy card sends wrong timestamps, essids - 
they simply ignore it.

I have a old cisco aironet (802.11b) in my notebook which usually works 
but sometimes fails if someone uses a buggy wifi driver within radio 
range. But it is way better than intel ipw2200 that i had before 
(nothing would help, particularly not magic thinking - bury a chicken 
bone in bright moon light, run around the house 13teen times, then try 
again. If it doesn't work start over again)

Good old orinoco 802.11b and old prism2/2.5/3 chipsets work somehow. 
Also Prism 54 hardmac works and all old Atmel chipsets. All cards 
mentioned here in the second place are prone to get confused by 
misbehaving drivers blindly creating new essids, ignoring the existing 
one. The sinister/dump card/driver may even send false time stamps in 
their beacons (which are used to determine which Essid is the_one). And 
I won't guarantee that they work at all - depending on the firmware 
installed in the cards.

The problem why your setup fails: You have one card that starts 
misbehaving in the first place, that causes the first cell-split. Now 
you have two Essids for the same channel/ssid in the air. Confusing all 
the other candidates. I remember having 5 laptops with five different 
Essids - all with the same SSID and channel. If you already have cell 
splitting perform a power cycle of all cards involved. I know - it is 
terrible... Then find out step by step who is the rogue man out...


It is a driver/firmware nightmare and I hate it ever since I had the 
idea to use mesh (which I'm still amazed about). Few card/driver 
combinations actually work.

Sven-Ola reported that Ralink rt73 USB also works, but I cannot 
replicate that, at least with the community maintained driver. Forget 
about Zydas, Realtek as well...

I didn't check Marvel Libertas yet, though. But I don't put much hope on it.

It's a sad and cruel world! (At least in terms of WiFi and Ad-Hoc)

Cheers,

elektra

> Also, can anyone confirm a chipset/driver on the latest Linux like
> the gutsy/hardy kernels which actually associate with OLSR-DHCP
> on freifunk? Which distros, which drivers, which freifunk versions?
>
> regards,
> Jan
>
>