Problems with Avaya Silver

[amitchell]

I now have an Avaya Silver card to replace the Aironet so that I can set up a peer-ro-peer network. However, I'm still having problems!?! When I try to connect, the power light comes on but nothing happens to the radio light and I can't connect. Does anyone know what might be going on?

Austin (somewhet pis*ed off now, as is my other half...)

[diem]

Have you checked out the info in my FAQ? Admittedly I don't have anything specific about peer-to-peer setup, but the Lucent driver (I presume you're using this in your ethernet config not the Cisco) has a tick-box for it.

I'd suggest enabling the PC notebook's wireless link first, set up a manual TCP/IP configuration, then attempt to connect from the netBook. Make sure you have WEP disabled at both ends to begin with (start simple then get more complex), and that both ends have the same SSID setting. NetStatRF on the netBook will show you when you have the radio link talking; note of course that the card and radio will only wake up when you attempt to make a connection, so you will need to use FlFinger or similar to attempt a ping or somesuch.

[amitchell]

Hi,

Tried all of the things you have said (very hepful FAQ by the way). However, I'm not sure what the SSID is.

Austin.

[diem]

SSID is the 'name' of the wireless network to which you wish to connect. It may not be relevant for peer-to-peer. In the netBook Lucent driver, its the 'WaveLAN network name' field.

What card are you using in the laptop by the way?

[amitchell]

The other card is a Sitecom which may be a problem as I've heard that perr-to-peer only works reliably with cards of the same make.

Austin.

[diem]

Its true, peer-to-peer is much more picky than managed.

Its all down to the chipset used in the card - see if you can find out what chipset the Sitecom uses - it'll be either Cisco, Intersil, Atmel or Lucent. The Avaya uses Lucent.

Does netstatRF show any radio activity at all when you try to connect?

[amitchell]

The Sitecom card uses the Intersil (?) Prism2 chipset. There is no activity showing in netstatRF.

Austin.

[diem]

As you'll have seen from my FAQ, this is based on the Lucent Hermes chipset, but is different in a few areas. Perhaps peer-to-peer is one of them?

The good news is Prism2 is supported by the netBook's Lucent driver. Perhaps try switching the cards to the 'opposite' machine?

[amitchell]

The Sitecom card will not work in the netbook :-( Keeps giving a -5 error code. May just give up and sell what I have as I've just bought a P800 :-)

Thanks for your help,.

Austin.

[ktkawabe]

Hi, maybe I'm too late but anyway:

I have both Sitecom WL011 and Orinoco Silver (exactly the same thing with Avaya Silver). The chipset of WL011 is Intersil Prism2.5 and it won't work in netBook. I have never tried P2P connection for OrinocoSilver/netBook with WL011/laptop(Linux).

However, I also have a USB wireless adaptor from Sitecom which uses the same chipset as WL011 for my desktop(Win2k), and my Orinoco/netBook is connecting to my desktop using P2P without any problem. So it shouldn't be the chipset issue.

I'll try to load Win2k on my laptop and see if P2P works for WL011/Windows with OrinocoSilver/netBook and report back.

Regards,
Keita

[lilspikey]

So how did you get peer-to-peer to work?

I recently visited my friends and tried peer-to-peer with two lucent cards, my netBook and a windows laptop. Couldn't get it to work. All that we established was that the cards were seeing each other, as netstatrf and equiv windows program were picking up the MAC addresses of the cards.

In the end we figured it might be the channels being used. My friends laptop would only run on channel 11 for peer-to-peer and I understand the netBook used channel 1? We couldn't see how to change the channel, so we gave up.

[ktkawabe]

Hi Austin, I tried and it worked.
I have loaded win2k on my laptop, installed Sitecom WLAN monitor utility on it and set it up. If you use anything other than Win2k the procedure is a bit different, but I think you can get the idea. This is the minimal setup and you have to tweak it to suit your purpose.

[A] Setting up Sitecom WL-011 on Win2k laptop
Insert Sitecom Card.
"Start" -> "Settings" -> "Dialup and network".
Right click Sitecom card, then Properties.
Select TCP/IP properties.
  Set the static private IP address. Any private address would do,
but I set this to:
  IP address 192.168.0.5
  Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
  Default gateway (left blank)
  DNS blank
Press "OK".

Then open Sitecom Wireless LAN Monitor Utility.
Select "Encription" tab and Disable encryption.
Select "Monitor" tab.
Click "Change".
  Operating Mode: Ad-Hoc
  Channel: 3 (anything would do I think)
  SSID: KAWABE_HOME
  TxRate: Auto
  Int.Roaming Disabled
Then press "submit".

[B] Setting up Orinoco Silver on netBook:
Configuration method "Manual"
hostname : netBook
Device : Lucent WaveLan/Orinoco Card
Press "Options"
Options:
  network name KAWABE_HOME
  p2p checked

Advanced
  AP Density low
  Transmit rate 1.0Mbps
  Medium reservation not ticked
  Fixed not ticked

Power Management
  Card Power management unticked
   Receive all multicasts unticked
  Maximum sleep duration 65535ms

Encryption
  Enable Encryption unticked

Addresses tab
  IP 192.168.0.6
  Net mask 255.255.255.0
  Default gateway 0.0.0.0
  DNS 0.0.0.0

Routing tab
   Nothing

Advanced tab
  IEEE802.3 encapsulation unticked
  ARP cache timeout 1800 secs

Press "Done" and then OK

[C] testing
Open FLFinger on netBook
Ctrl+O
Address (new address)
New Address 192.168.0.5
Ping
And the laptop was reacheable.

That was it.

And lilspikey, if you need more than data link layer connectivity, I guess you have to supply IP address. Have you done this? You can set up your laptop as a DHCP server or you can supply static IP (as illustrated above). Also, I remember that there are two p2p mode available for lucent chipset, one being the "real (i.e. standardized)" p2p mode and the other being lucent-only p2p (called "demo adhoc mode" or something like that). I think netBook driver only supports the real one. But anyway I have never tried p2p between Lucent/laptop and Lucent/netBook.

[lilspikey]

Hi ktkawabe,
we used stati ip addresses and it shoud all have worked, but it just didn't quite seem to. Unfortunately I won't be able to try this again for a couple of months. At least now I can make sure the settings on the netBook are correct, thank you!
Part of the problem may have been that we couldn't work out how to change the laptops channel, with was probably more to do with the software on the laptop. It was reportin gthat it was using channel 11 and woul not let us change it.
Anyway, I'm just glad that someone has actually used p2p mode. Everywhere else I look only talks about using base-stations and the like.

cheers,
John

[amitchell]

ktkawabe,

Thanks for all your help. I was doing a number of things wrong: not using an SSID and using the wrong network type (Pseudo Ad Hoc instead of 802.11 Ad Hoc).

I have now installed a proxy server (602Pro Lan Suite) and I can now connect to the web via Opera!

Again, thanks for your and everyone elses help.

Austin.

PS Typed this on the netBook vai the wireless Lan.