Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.os.linux.networking > #4183

networking a real dog's breakfast

Show all headers | View raw

Networking on Linux seems to be a bit of a mess. 

wpa_supplicant just randomly connects with an access point, ignoring all
suggestions as to what it should connect to. Thus, if you have (like me)
a /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file, it will just randomly choose one of
them to connect to, if it is available. 

It will also just connect to the a given SSID in random order, rather
than connecting to say the BSSID with the strongest signal available (
as would be sensible) Thus it will connect to a flakey 30% signal
strength BSSID rather than a 90% signal strength BSSID with the same
SSID.

iwlist craps out if there are too many BSSID available. When I am at
airports, it is impossible to use the Network Center on Mageia, since it
uses iwlist, and airports often have "too many" access points for iwlist
(iw will list them, but it has a totally lunatic output format, and
gives huge warnings that you should not screen scrape it-- and it has,
as far as I can see, no other output.) Also iw seems not to work at all
half the time, or if you happen to be connected to an access point, it
will only give that one AP, when there another 50 available that it does
not list. 
wpa_cli MUST have wpa_supplicant running when it tries to do anything. 

And all of them have woefully inadequate documentation, and ancient
documentation. ( for example, wpa_supplicant documentation does not mention
nl80211 driver, when that is now the strongly approved driver, all
others being deprecated. )

Back to comp.os.linux.networking | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

networking a real dog's breakfast William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2018-08-20 19:34 +0000
  Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2018-08-20 20:12 +0000
    Re: networking a real dog's breakfast William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2018-08-20 20:59 +0000
    Re: networking a real dog's breakfast tom <tom@0.0.0.0> - 2018-08-27 21:19 -0700
      Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2018-08-28 11:29 +0000
        Re: networking a real dog's breakfast tom <tom@0.0.0.0> - 2018-11-25 18:43 -0800
      Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Allodoxaphobia <knock_yourself_out@example.net> - 2018-08-28 13:31 +0000
  Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2018-08-28 20:10 +0000
    Re: networking a real dog's breakfast William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2018-08-28 20:49 +0000
      Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2018-08-29 20:21 +0000
        Re: networking a real dog's breakfast William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2018-08-29 23:29 +0000
          Re: networking a real dog's breakfast Jerry Peters <jerry@example.invalid> - 2018-08-30 20:19 +0000

csiph-web