On Sun, 22 Jan 2006 19:20:40 +0100, Leonid Grinberg wrote: > Hello, > > I just ordered an IBM Thinkpad A21e. It has a (wired) LAN card, and 2 > PCMCI slots, but no wireless card. It also comes with Windows 2000 (a > bug which will soon be squashed). > > Anyways, as I am going to be using this laptop with Wi-Fi, I decided > to just buy a wireless card seperately. I have my eyes set on a Belkin > card. However, I want to know some things about wireless with Debian: > > First of all, does anybody have any experience with Belkin? Any > problems? I expect that I will have to use ndiswrapper and use Windows > drivers. Will this mean I have to hold on deleting Windows, install > the card and save the drivers to a CD or something similar? > > When the laptop can use both wired and wireless connections, how can I > tell it something like: check the wired connection and if that fails, > try wireless? How do I switch when it is on (I expect it is something > like ifdown <WIRED> && ifup <WIRELESS>)? > > Also, how do I configure the wireless card to go to a certain hot > spot? For example, if it needs a password. My school has a free Wi-Fi > service without a password, but at home, my router is secure. > > Thanks in advance! > > -- > Leonid Grinberg
If you're planning on a belkin and ndiswrapper, perhaps you should also consider a open source driver that won't require windows executables at some level. I've been using a Asus 11G with the rt2500 drivers on debian unstable with a kernel compiled from the debian sources. There is no firmware that you have to find and the card works very well for me. There is probably any number of ways I've read about to do the switching around; but I go to the simplest most of the time. What I do is have a few stanzas in my /etc/network/interfaces file which will do a variety of wireless settings whether I need a wep key or there is a login or its all open. I tend to be at home a lot on wifi, at work with wifi, and at coffee shops or starbuck's where I want to use tmobile hotspot since my company buys me time there. To make a long story short, my /etc/network/interfaces file looks like this: # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback #the etho interface 3com auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp iface home inet dhcp wireless-essid xxxxx wireless-key yyyyyyy iface tmobile inet dhcp wireless-essid tmobile So, when I want to switch to another wifi network, I do an "ifdown ra0" and then an "ifup ra0=tmobile". I get a dhcp managed IP address, etc. I could just have easily have included my work static IP address assignment here in another stanza because it uses really basic sets of stanzas like any interface. To do it all manually, you could use a combination of iwconfig and dhcp or ifconfig commands depending on where you are coming from and going to on the net. Something like "iwconfig ra0 essid xxxxx key yyyyyy" will set up the card's essid and key and then a "dhclient ra0" will do the rest. There are probably more esoteric ways of doing this but since I am wireless about 90% of the time these days, I just spent some time setting up wifi stanzas. I've also used things like netenv, wifiswitch, and a few others. I just strive for the simplest way of doing things and this way seems pretty easy to me. -- Michael Perry | Do or do not. There is no try. -Master Yoda [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.lnxpowered.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
